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Moved recently so I've been checking out the various FLGS in the area. Had the pleasure of doing Open Play, Matched, GT so far, looking forward to convincing some folks to do a crusade league in the future.

 Octopoid wrote:

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Octopoid wrote:

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I played some Matched Play, some with GT scenarios, and some Crusade games, until I got tired of the game ending with me getting casually tabled and then told "yeah, well, if you bought different models you could do something other than sitting around and getting beaten on," so I quit. I still don't really know if the game is as badly balanced as it seems to me or if the people I was playing with were just donkey-caves lying to me about what a "soft list" was, but I know it's no fun and I find a lot of the excessive abstraction irritating across a wide range of formats.

If their actual, literal response to you not having fun was, "You need to buy different models to have fun," they were donkey caves. Full stop.

Agreed, but he also has some fringe and abused armies that don't make things easier on him.

That's as may be, and I'm not saying he should come back to 40K if he's not enjoying himself. Just, "Screw you, git gud, scrub" should have been replaced by, "Here, let me tailor my army down a little bit and give some pointers to help work with what you've got."

Oh, absolutely, but I still get tabled by the tailored-down armies because I'm playing things like my mechanized Alpha Legion that are just straight-up unplayable in any matchup even against tailored-down armies, and the pointers to help me work with what I've got segued pretty seamlessly into "either buy a different army or stop playing for two years until you get a Codex" without the person on the other end of the conversation even noticing they were doing it.

We play

Open War deck w"Matched play" points.

Matched Play and Crusade.

Crusade used to be my #1 choice, but it became super awkward to write narratives given some of the imbalances. My Eldar would get tabled by Grey Knights whose lore is explicitly "we murder all psykers hands down" and then I'd have to be all "well, um, my farseer survives because plot!" Which, I suppose, is closer to 'real' 40k lore than anything else

I still play Crusade when I can get it, but the club has shifted to Matched or Bust (because the Crusade campaign ended up with some absolutely obnoxious armies given the rules buffs some people were throwing around) so I follow along.

We mostly play Crusade now. Matched is fun every now and then but playing matches all the time was getting on our nerves. Never bought any of the CA or other expansion books. Don't get to play enough to justify the outlay.

Votes are getting less now, and while matched play/GT seems to be far the most common way to play, it seems that crusade is very popular too.

People also don't seem to be a fan of buying books for additional missions, and unsurprisingly no one likes the terrain nonsense GW released

I should add out crusade campaign hasn't progressed past a half dozen games in most cases, so we haven't seen the imbalances some report.

 Jidmah wrote:
and unsurprisingly no one likes the terrain nonsense GW released

Good riddance


Automatically Appended Next Post:

The_Real_Chris wrote:
I should add out crusade campaign hasn't progressed past a half dozen games in most cases, so we haven't seen the imbalances some report.

I don't think people should look too closely for imbalance in Crusade. That doesn't really seem to be the core goal of a system like that.

 Daedalus81 wrote:

 Jidmah wrote:
and unsurprisingly no one likes the terrain nonsense GW released

Good riddance

As someone who adores GW terrain, let me echo that sentiment: GW's "tactical terrain" stuff is utter garbage.

I had to go look what the feth that was. I didn't even knew that thing existed.

And it was sold as an expansion for matched play and tournaments. I'm surprised no one plays with it, with how fast everyone is to accept any GW "matched approved" content as THE TRU WAY.

Round these parts Matched Play GT 2021 is the norm, as Matched Play GT 2020 was the norm before. I have dabbled in Crusade, but it has not caught on at the FLGS. The GT Mission Packs sell out (although folks are somewhat miffed by the recent offering - really really GW?), but you can always find the Crusade books and Terrain books on the shelf. Of course your Meta may vary!

I think that people like the GT pack because it offers a set of common expectations about a game. The terrain pack, though, just seems weird and I think it will fade away. Playing Crusade, to me, takes a little more coordination to work. Like virtually any tabletop campaign or progression system I have seen, people start with great expectations and then walk away. Peel back the layers of posters on your FLGS gaming room wall to see a history of failed campaigns...

 Jidmah wrote:
Votes are getting less now, and while matched play/GT seems to be far the most common way to play, it seems that crusade is very popular too.

People also don't seem to be a fan of buying books for additional missions, and unsurprisingly no one likes the terrain nonsense GW released

I bet a lot of folks are voting for both. I play both Crusade and Matched play, so I voted for both (At least I think I did)

 Galas wrote:
And it was sold as an expansion for matched play and tournaments. I'm surprised no one plays with it, with how fast everyone is to accept any GW "matched approved" content as THE TRU WAY.

I think part of it was down to just how meagre the actual rules were.

To start with, they got rid of their entire Sector Imperialis range seemingly overnight with the exception of the Battle Sanctum, so their new terrain datasheet thing contained rules for none of those great buildings. This is on top of getting rid of the Plasma Conduit kit (which is now only available in various combo boxes).

This meant that the only stuff left was:


So now a good portion of the rules is telling us that these two buildings:


... are actually 15 different building types, but only if you squint and hold them at a different angle.

And they added in this as well.

It was just so half-assed, made all the more maddening by the fact that it didn't have to be this way.

As is basically always the case with GW, they've happened across another fantastic idea but have been hampered by their inability to execute said idea. If their took terrain a little more seriously, and stopped having various ranges disappear almost at random and certainly without warning (and, worse, bringing some pieces back, only at a higher price for the same if not less product), then this system might have worked.

It also took them, what, a bit over a year to release the second set of these cards? For a set of rules most people probably don't remember exists, assuming they even knew in the first place.

Tactical Terrain had potential. The boxes of terrain (all of them, whether 40k or KT) should come with the appropriate Tactical Terrain cards.

That's all they had to do to make it work.

Now if they insisted on making money in addition to the Mission Pack by selling cards, that too could could have been better. Sell me a pack of cards that includes ALL terrain, 40k and KT past and present.

Not as good a solution as a free card with every box of terrain... But better than the $#!+show we have now.

I don't even know what half those 'options' are.

But most of the ones I do have never caught on with actual people in shops, so... the obvious one.

I voted 'I don't play 9th edition' but the truth is that I haven't been able to.

Between the pandemic, few people being interested in my area (many are moving to AoS 3rd edition), and not having the time to absorb a whole new edition's worth of rules, this year couldn't be worse for 40k for me.