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Different games for different folks, Necromunda is a narrative campaign game while Killteam aim at being competitive with tournaments held by GW and make use of almost all 40k factions.

Chopstick wrote:
Different games for different folks, Necromunda is a narrative campaign game while Killteam aim at being competitive with tournaments held by GW and make use of almost all 40k factions.

Coming from the Rogue Trader days I don't like it but there's no denying thats what GW has since done to 40K.

I dunno, Chopstick, maybe I'm trying to relieve the old days when they are just plain gone...

SamusDrake wrote:

Chopstick wrote:
Different games for different folks, Necromunda is a narrative campaign game while Killteam aim at being competitive with tournaments held by GW and make use of almost all 40k factions.

Coming from the Rogue Trader days I don't like it but there's no denying thats what GW has since done to 40K.

I dunno, Chopstick, maybe I'm trying to relieve the old days when they are just plain gone...

I'm with you (all the way back to Rogue Trader). Tournaments sprung up in the void between Rogue Trader and Warhammer 40K second edition and while GW encouraged it in so much as it could sell more miniatures there is no proof they believe that is the way the game should be played. I think we have sufficient evidence that GW has never cared about competitive tournaments in the way that some players do. Whether it's numerous role-play like games (Rogue Trader, Necromunda, Inquisitor, numerous Kill Team incarnations, early LotR games) or its complete disregard for "balance" in 40K. A lot of competitive players might have a hard time acknowledging that the original version of Warhammer Fantasy looks much more like D&D or a mash-up of WFRP and Necromunda.

Competitive players are a vocal minority in the hobby whose voice is amplified my the megaphone of the internet. But we also know that last years was a blockbuster for GW...and there was next to no formal competitive play. GW plays lip service to competitive play because it knows that its main customers don't play competitively.

PS: This doesn't mean they shouldn't try to balance stuff because who wants to play a game where you always lose because you took the cool looking elf-soldier over the ugly but powerful one. It just means that for most people playing with their friends it just has to be fun enough.

Ugg.....The new gear info has locked it in. Certain weapons and gear combos are gonna be sick.

Ceasless on that Ork rapid fire sniper being one.

 Chairman Aeon wrote:
Competitive players are a vocal minority in the hobby whose voice is amplified my the megaphone of the internet. But we also know that last years was a blockbuster for GW...and there was next to no formal competitive play. GW plays lip service to competitive play because it knows that its main customers don't play competitively.

I won't claim to have experienced a broad enough cross-section of metas and players in the hobby to make definitive statements, but this notion that most people are in it for the more role-play or narrative experiences, and the competitive community only seems big because it's what gets play on the internet gives my inner skeptic pause.

Namely, I'm in 100% agreement that competitive looks representative of the hobby on the internet. But that begs the question, if it's a minority, why isn't the bigger alternative also a noticeable presence on the internet? Why is it only the competitive players who use the megaphone?

The obvious answer would seem to be that competitive players have a lot to talk about as they try to dissect the meta or argue about what's broken or not. Okay, sure. That's a factor, and it certainly provides fodder for content creators. But it's not the only thing you'd expect to be able to support content creators. We all know that painting has a thriving content creator community and a strong presence on the internet (one might even say an outsized presence, if one were to look at the average primered army at my local FLGSes). There's demand for other lore-focused formats, as the Black Library/lore overview/trivia channels demonstrate, and there's certainly an appetite on the internet to watch other people play games (hi, Twitch and Let's Play channels). So am I just missing the community of content creators who stream battle reports of their narrative crusades and Necromunda campaigns? Or is there some reason that some of this silent majority of fans doesn't crave (and provide) this content?

Occam's Razor would seem to suggest that most people don't approach the hobby from a narrative angle. Sure, the majority aren't WAAC tournament players, but I don't think it's outrageous to suggest that contrary to your supposition, most people play with matched play rules even casually at their kitchen tables.

In my experience like 90% of people are competitively kinded. Maybe not to the extent of hard core tournament players, but they're generally focusing on the better units in the codex, avoiding the worst, and not doing any overarching narratives.

 kirotheavenger wrote:
In my experience like 90% of people are competitively kinded. Maybe not to the extent of hard core tournament players, but they're generally focusing on the better units in the codex, avoiding the worst, and not doing any overarching narratives.

I'd say that mostly gels with my experience also. Damned near all 40k players I've encountered are competitive. Not necessarily tournament players, not necessarily WAAC, but competitive, yes.

Most of the fluffy bunnies I've met who are into narrative play don't play 40k, they play historics, LotR or are more into RPGs.

That said, over the years I've started to form the opinion that perhaps most of GW's customers aren't even gamers, forget about narrative vs competitive.

I think that some of the oddities that some folks are feeling, such as the artillery damage and some of the odd feel, have to do with their effort to balance this version for competitive play.

As a Titanicus player, I've seen some of the disconnect between their written word (fluff) and their game rules in stark relief.

 schoon wrote:
I think that some of the oddities that some folks are feeling, such as the artillery damage and some of the odd feel, have to do with their effort to balance this version for competitive play.

As a Titanicus player, I've seen some of the disconnect between their written word (fluff) and their game rules in stark relief.

It’s also not very interesting, so the mechanical disconnect is kinda all there is to talk about some of the things we know.

SamusDrake wrote:


But in conclusion I'm just not excited enough to invest in this new edition of Kill Team. Maybe that will change further down the road but this isn't as good a launch as Warcry's.

I don't know what qualifies a launch as "good," but I found Warcry to be a very bland, simplistic take on fantasy skirmish rules. Compared to anything released in the last 10-15 years, it doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. The exception being the fantastic terrain/board generation system, which was widely disregarded by more competitive players anyway. Locally there were very few enthusiastic fans of Warcry...when a juggernaut like GW has a release less popular than a little-known indie game like Relicblade, you know something went wrong. The new version of Kill Team looks interesting. I like that they re-worked the systems, and divorced it from 40K. That absolutely needed to happen. I also like that the design team seems to have taken a page from some of the more recent, innovative skirmish games like Stargrave, Infinity, Malifaux, Tomorrow's War, etc. How well that translates into practice? I guess we shall see. I will at least give the new rules a try. I'm cautiously optimistic.

Warcry matched play & tournaments have zero interest in my local community. The narrative campaign leagues are quite popular though. Literally all of the Warcry play that goes on is either campaign or learning/demo games.

As for what it brings to the table, it's a lot of fun and people can use the AoS minis they already have. It doesn't need some special gimmick, it's a fun game with nice miniatures.

 schoon wrote:
I think that some of the oddities that some folks are feeling, such as the artillery damage and some of the odd feel, have to do with their effort to balance this version for competitive play.

As a Titanicus player, I've seen some of the disconnect between their written word (fluff) and their game rules in stark relief.

Titanicus has points and is modular, this seems much more restrictive.

Kaffis wrote:

 Chairman Aeon wrote:
Competitive players are a vocal minority in the hobby whose voice is amplified my the megaphone of the internet. But we also know that last years was a blockbuster for GW...and there was next to no formal competitive play. GW plays lip service to competitive play because it knows that its main customers don't play competitively.

Namely, I'm in 100% agreement that competitive looks representative of the hobby on the internet. But that begs the question, if it's a minority, why isn't the bigger alternative also a noticeable presence on the internet? Why is it only the competitive players who use the megaphone?

Because the guys buying kits to play with their friends in their basement don't go online to post about it. Online forums have always represented a small minority anyways. It just seems amplified, but it really isn't. If 100 people are online arguing about the meta, it seems like that is a big deal, but the thousands of guys buying minis who play at home or with their friends aren't being heard, because they don't care enough to be part of the conversation. Honestly, people playing against strangers in a store are a minority. Even folks who meet at the store usually are playing people they know.

People get worked up about the meta or such because that's just kind of how people are.They think "well, maybe I might...". Hell even I am guilty of worrying about whether or not something is "legal" or "meta" and I've never, EVER played anyone that wasn't a family member or close friend. Hell, I've never even had a tournament LEGAL army list in 21 years! So me worrying about "meta" or what they are going to do at LVO is outright absurd, but I've caught myself doing that.

kirotheavenger wrote:In my experience like 90% of people are competitively kinded. Maybe not to the extent of hard core tournament players, but they're generally focusing on the better units in the codex, avoiding the worst, and not doing any overarching narratives.

That's because that's who you play with and see.

A while back, Wizards of the Coast published their internal numbers regarding the Magic the Gathering scene. As loathe as I am to post from memory, the amount of players who take part in formal MTG events, starting with Friday Night Magic and up is shockingly low. The number was between 1% to 5%.

That means as HUGE as MtG is, all the people you see playing at the store for FnM and events and such represent a TINY fraction of the people who buy Magic cards. Magic would literally be a dead game if it only has the tournament scene.

Casuals are the bread and butter of EVERY hobby, full stop bar none. The people who are serious are always a minority. Check out this graphic from another game I play, Black Desert Online:



Black Desert Online has a (deserved, IMO) reputation for being a cut-throat PvP MMO. This is a chart created by the Korean developers, Pearl Abyss showing the percentage of the players in each Gearscore bracket. Gearscore is a measure of the characters power, with over 600 being considered minimum for serious PvP. Yet according to that graphic only 10.7% of the 20,000,000 who have played the game have achieved that. 36.8% have a gearscore lower then 499. I don't even know how that is possible, you don't even need to try to get at least 499. Only a tiny, tiny amount of effort is need to get into the 549 to 599 bracket, yet only 27.8% have bothered, and such a score isn't even considered good. It is basically just enough to get started and do lower end stuff. And these numbers aren't guesses, they are actual, real data from the game client as collected by the games creator and developer.

I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.

Yeah that Guard preview leaves a lot to be desired, especially since I have no idea what the actual difference is with Vets and regular Guard, as stat wise they look exactly the same.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.

MtG is not always competitive. People play wacky theme decks. Include cards because they like the art. All sorts of ways.

Kinda like 40k.

The goal is to win. Even if you use wacky cards, or just include cards for the art. But the goal is to win. You might say that their goal is to have fun, and of course, that is the goal for everyone playing casually. But it is still a competition, where two players try to win, and is therefore competitive. Just like a majority (at least online) of how people play 40k.

Maybe I'm not getting my point across very well, but competitive does not mean you want to win at any cost, or winning is the only way they'll have fun, but the goal of the game is to win.

Yeah... problem is the large numbers of people who do take them all to be the same thing.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.

I've tried explaining this on Dakka before. If a game pits players against each other with the goal of winning, it's competitive. Period.Some folks just don't understand that point- or won't accept it. It makes discussing games more difficult, especially when the topic is balance.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
The goal is to win. Even if you use wacky cards, or just include cards for the art. But the goal is to win.

So you have a bunch of people who know they're not going to win a tournament go to a tournament. Either you say those people are fools for attempting something that they know they're going to fail at, or you accept that they're not there with the goal of winning.

For some of the people using wacky cards, their goal is "Let's find out what this does" or "I want to see what this does when I try it out". In some individuals, the drive to see the game mechanics in action matters more than the outcome of the game. "Oh, the other player won. Hmm. They were using that, that and that. Oh, that's interesting..."

Hell, it's why people still call things like Sorry! a game, and enjoy playing it--they want to see something interesting happen and they might win while they're at it.

"Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses. Two player games are often competitive, with a distinct win-or-lose outcome. Two-team games often have the same pattern, where one team winning means the other team loses."

The definition of a competitive game. I must admit, I was wrong initially. I said with the goal of winning. It doesn't need to be your goal. It just has to be an outcome. Note that this definition does not include ties, so it is not complete, but 40k and MtG are competitive, even if your goal is simply to have fun. The game of Life, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Poker, Age of Sigmar. All games that are competitive, even if your goal is not just to win.

Some might say that I'm moving goalposts, but I was wrong, thanks to your clarifications, and came to a better conclusion. Thank you.

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
"Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses. Two player games are often competitive, with a distinct win-or-lose outcome. Two-team games often have the same pattern, where one team winning means the other team loses."

The definition of a competitive game. I must admit, I was wrong initially. I said with the goal of winning. It doesn't need to be your goal. It just has to be an outcome. Note that this definition does not include ties, so it is not complete, but 40k and MtG are competitive, even if your goal is simply to have fun. The game of Life, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Poker, Age of Sigmar. All games that are competitive, even if your goal is not just to win.

Some might say that I'm moving goalposts, but I was wrong, thanks to your clarifications, and came to a better conclusion. Thank you.

That's about it, yeah. Winning as the outcome is a better way of putting it. Sorry if my post came across poorly.

Soo, what time do WC usually post their "Next Week in Warhammer" articles? I'm expecting the preorder announcement today, followed by product pricing confirmations early next week.

Hoping the Compendium and the separate rulebook won't be stupid expensive..

Also, has it been confirmed that the Octarius box comes with a hardback rulebook?

 tauist wrote:
Soo, what time do WC usually post their "Next Week in Warhammer" articles? I'm expecting the preorder announcement today, followed by product pricing confirmations early next week.

Hoping the Compendium and the separate rulebook won't be stupid expensive..

Also, has it been confirmed that the Octarius box comes with a hardback rulebook?

6pm UK time, so 7 and a quarter hours from now.

Blastaar wrote:

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
I think the big difference here, MtG is always competitive, even if not tournaments. I think this is where language is breaking down. Fighting games are competitive, even if you don't go to a tournament. I would guess that most people that play 40k want to win, just not so bad they dedicate themselves to a tournament level. Therefore, most would be competitive. But it is near impossible to get the stats for that.

I've tried explaining this on Dakka before. If a game pits players against each other with the goal of winning, it's competitive. Period.Some folks just don't understand that point- or won't accept it. It makes discussing games more difficult, especially when the topic is balance.

Blastaar wrote:

 TheBestBucketHead wrote:
"Competitive games are those in which players play against one another and where one player winning means another player loses. Two player games are often competitive, with a distinct win-or-lose outcome. Two-team games often have the same pattern, where one team winning means the other team loses."

The definition of a competitive game. I must admit, I was wrong initially. I said with the goal of winning. It doesn't need to be your goal. It just has to be an outcome. Note that this definition does not include ties, so it is not complete, but 40k and MtG are competitive, even if your goal is simply to have fun. The game of Life, Snakes and Ladders, Monopoly, Poker, Age of Sigmar. All games that are competitive, even if your goal is not just to win.

Some might say that I'm moving goalposts, but I was wrong, thanks to your clarifications, and came to a better conclusion. Thank you.

That's about it, yeah. Winning as the outcome is a better way of putting it. Sorry if my post came across poorly.

What exactly is gained by drawing on this definition if you're trying to differentiate players based on their approach to and expectations of a game?

AoS 1st ed was largely not considered a functional game upon release and was widely considered attractive to only a certain set of players, one generally considered a minority (for which there is at least evidence given the commercial failure of the game and GW's unprecedented scramble to reintroduce proven elements to bring it closer to older games and turn things around). Could you describe the release version of AoS as competitive? Using that definition, yes. But would you? Did anybody actually do that?

You have to differentiate between dictionary definitions that only define things in the broadest, simplest terms and practical use of similar or identical terms in involved discussions. That definition doesn't differentiate between editions of AoS, and I'm sure you'll find that in practical terms AoS players very much differentiate between editions in terms of how competitive they can be played and have been played. Similarly, that definition does not allow any distinction between AoS, 40k, Infinity, chess, or any other two player/side game where one side winning means the other side loses. That definition isn't wrong, but it's non-functional for the goal of the usual discussions about the spectrum of player motivations and expectations of a given game.

You have to accept that in practical use competitive, as subjectively and ill defined as it is used, is applied only to a certain set of players and no amount of insisting that because a game is formally defined as competitive and thus all its players are competitive anything going to change about that*. Widespread use trumps dictionary definitions. That's how language works.



*That's nonsense, of course. If you could actually convince everyone to drop their informal use competitive and use the dictionary definition instead, you could very much effect change. You're just not likely to succeed in this.

 tauist wrote:
Soo, what time do WC usually post their "Next Week in Warhammer" articles? I'm expecting the preorder announcement today, followed by product pricing confirmations early next week.

6pm BST / 7pm CEST.

I guess I think of “competitive” when winning is the only, or primary reason to play. While accurate, I think using the term for any time there are multiple players and win conditions is a bit vague and not particularly useful.

Casual vs. Competitive is a spectrum, not a binary choice. The world has more than WAAC netlisters and people pushing models around making “pew pew” noises.

It nice to have the option to play at the different levels. Obviously, you have issues when different midsets collide. This has been an issue for the entire life of GW. Balance is goal, and one that escapes them. Partially because they want to keep all the options to let you make your dudes come alive. Here on Dakka we tend towards the competitive side, but not exclusively. People who just love the models and don’t focus on victory, but just the fun of the game don’t need to know which option is mathematically most effective, or which strats get broken when used together.

I hope they get the balance close enough with the new KT that it’s fun to play. Both internal and external with the forces. While I think of myself as a casual player, I still crunch the numbers (but sometimes ignore them for fluffy/personal reasons). I hate must-take or trap choices, or when one army is just going to win over others in a rock/paper/scissors match.

I’m also interested to see how they sell this to people not getting the box. Not interested in either of the starter armies personally, and the terrain doesn’t match my table.

 Phobos wrote:

Black Desert Online has a (deserved, IMO) reputation for being a cut-throat PvP MMO. This is a chart created by the Korean developers, Pearl Abyss showing the percentage of the players in each Gearscore bracket. Gearscore is a measure of the characters power, with over 600 being considered minimum for serious PvP. Yet according to that graphic only 10.7% of the 20,000,000 who have played the game have achieved that. 36.8% have a gearscore lower then 499. I don't even know how that is possible, you don't even need to try to get at least 499. Only a tiny, tiny amount of effort is need to get into the 549 to 599 bracket, yet only 27.8% have bothered, and such a score isn't even considered good. It is basically just enough to get started and do lower end stuff. And these numbers aren't guesses, they are actual, real data from the game client as collected by the games creator and developer.

Is the graph active players, or all players?
Cause if it's all players, the answer is easy- the number of active players of any MMO is vastly outnumbered by the number of players who tried it once and haven't picked it up, or got bored of the grind halfway through. If it's all players, I'm in that graph, with my literal hour of playtime.

jmw23 wrote:

I don't know what qualifies a launch as "good," but I found Warcry to be a very bland, simplistic take on fantasy skirmish rules. Compared to anything released in the last 10-15 years, it doesn't bring anything new or interesting to the table. The exception being the fantastic terrain/board generation system, which was widely disregarded by more competitive players anyway. Locally there were very few enthusiastic fans of Warcry...when a juggernaut like GW has a release less popular than a little-known indie game like Relicblade, you know something went wrong. The new version of Kill Team looks interesting. I like that they re-worked the systems, and divorced it from 40K. That absolutely needed to happen. I also like that the design team seems to have taken a page from some of the more recent, innovative skirmish games like Stargrave, Infinity, Malifaux, Tomorrow's War, etc. How well that translates into practice? I guess we shall see. I will at least give the new rules a try. I'm cautiously optimistic.

The new rules I'm somewhat okay with( I like how they are handling shooting distance ) and as you say it remains to be seen how they hold up in practice. But thats not my beef...

As Kill Team players we were jealous of Warcry from day one as it recieved a proper theme, as it were, and the releases to back it up. We even got a look at some of the other warbands that would follow up the starter-set & rule book launch-releases.

Warcry can also at least exist on its own in a similar way to Necromunda; the chaos warbands battle for supremecy in the 8-Points, and is spiced up with mercenaries and beasts.

The only thing about the announcement/launch of Warcry I had criticized was GW not being clear as to what Warcry actually was and so I passed on it. Like others at the time it was a guessing game as to whether it was an AoS-version of Kill Team or Necromunda( some even suggesting Mordheim ), but as we know now it was pretty much both. In hindsight Warcry looks like a game that I should have jumped in with, but I stuck with Frostgrave instead( and AoS-Skirmish which is always a good laugh ).

Kill Team in hindsight, they've updated the rules but beyond that all we have to look forward to is rebuying everything we've already bought with the last edition, with the added expense that the core manual has now been split into two books; rules and factions( no doubt £20 each, and I still don't get my sodding howling banshees! ). It hasn't even got a proper starter set as its a limited product that is implied to sell out on launch day, and like Pariah Nexus, is aimed at 40K players. If there was any weight to GW saying that Kill Team is now set in the Octarius sector then surely the boxset would be designed to remain in print for at least the first season? I reckon it will be replaced in a months time with another starter set that plucks two random factions out of thin air with no relation whatsoever to Octarius - or anything else for that matter.

Y'know, I hope they prove me wrong, that I eat my words and cease being a bloody whinger. But so far I'm just not seeing it...

PS. As an additional thought, I've got this gut feeling that there will be a preview for next Saturday, so maybe my days of whinging are finally numbered?

 BlackoCatto wrote:
Yeah that Guard preview leaves a lot to be desired, especially since I have no idea what the actual difference is with Vets and regular Guard, as stat wise they look exactly the same.

It looks like Guard have more special rules, and sometimes more numbers. Whereas the Veterans have more specialists. For example the comms guy and the bionic guy.

As far as I can tell, veteran guard can either take seven guys in a fireteam like regular guard, or take five and get 'tactical assets'.
Instead of selecting the options above, they can instead deploy four more Trooper Veterans than normal.
It seems that the only reason that is the case is so that the ten-man squad in the starter box is a valid kill team.