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I don't care whether I win or lose. I care why I win or lose. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "You did (x), (y), and (z) during the game" I feel like there was some point to playing the game. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "Oh, you bought the wrong minis" I feel like I might as well have not bothered wasting the last 2-3 hours if we could have known what the outcome of the game was going to be from the beginning.
AnomanderRake wrote: I don't care whether I win or lose. I care why I win or lose. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "You did (x), (y), and (z) during the game" I feel like there was some point to playing the game. If I lose, and I ask why, and someone says "Oh, you bought the wrong minis" I feel like I might as well have not bothered wasting the last 2-3 hours if we could have known what the outcome of the game was going to be from the beginning.
Succinct and true.
Clocks for the clockmaker! Cogs for the cog throne!
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly...
Ironically, it is Games Workshop themselves who metastasized this cancer.
The turning point... The cancellation of Games Day.
A short synopsis: After the cancellation of Games Day the Warhammer community, in its hunger for a large scale Warhammer event, turned to the fledgling tournament scene to fill the gap. Within time, small scale Warhammer tournaments swelled in size as the fans flocked to them in greater and greater numbers - they had nowhere else to go. The problem however, was that these events were not (are not) a "celebration of the Warhammer hobby" as GW used to say in their Games Day tag line. Rather their sole purpose was (is) to cater to competitive play / players (e.g. Adepticon, NOVA and the various Frontline events). So... "When in Rome, do as the Romans do." This unfortunately and very rapidly caused a cultural shift in the Warhammer community to be overly competitive. Today GW has sadly given validity to this competitive culture by officially supporting these competitive events.
To me, any close game is a good game, win or loss. I also value my opponent's enjoyment over my victory, so I would rather skip a tactic that makes my opponent feel bad than win.
On the flip side, I do not value my opponent's enjoyment over my own. I want to have fun when playing as well.
7 Ork facts people always get wrong: Ragnar did not win against Thrakka, but suffered two crushing defeats within a few days of each other. A lasgun is powerful enough to sever an ork's appendage or head in a single, well aimed shot. Orks meks have a better understanding of electrics and mechanics than most Tech Priests. Orks do not think that purple makes them harder to see. They do think that camouflage does however, without knowing why. Gharkull Blackfang did not even come close to killing the emperor. Orks can be corrupted by chaos, but few of them have any interest in what chaos offers. Orks do not have the power of believe.
Issue with most Eldar players is that too few units feel like they should in game
I want a strong, but balanced, codex where I know I'm not gimped if I take a unit. I'm truly curious what 9th will bring for them but still play now and have fun with the army.
For the OP - I think there is a tendency online especially to assume that if something doesn't seem to work in the highest level tournaments, it can never ever work anywhere. And a tendency to want a full re-write rather than some points and rules tweaks.
But equally I think if you play in a fairly friendly environment (even if people care about winning) there's often massive skill gaps between players. So if you take a good player with an Eldar list they'll still tend to do okay versus a new/clueless player with a theoretically better faction. Whereas if you swap factions it seems to create an impossible mountain to climb and you might see 90% win rates.
Canadian 5th wrote: Would people apply these same ideas to a game like Chess? How about something like Starcraft?
40k should be a robust enough game to allow for competitive play. If it isn't that's not the fault of the players but of GW.
the frantic pace and jerky, unrealistic movements and formations of things in starcraft don't exactly lend to it being a particularly 'cinematic/narrative' experience, and it was clearly designed with competitive play in mind, particularly the sequel, even compared to other RTS games you can tell that things like 'your units respond instantaneously to any command you issue' is massively prioritized over any kind of realism. The closest tabletop experience to something like Starcraft for a video game would be something like Magic the Gathering. Sure, there is some sort of loose narrative framework of like...wizards summoning random fantasy creatures to do a fight and cast a spell, and there are images on the cards as well as names, but it is very very clearly designed from the ground up to be a quick strategic contest between players - you build your deck, you make very simple optimization decisions during the course of the game so it feels somewhat tactical, and you try to make your opponent go down to zero life points using your cards.
Chess is completely symbolic. There is no semblance of a narrative at play, at all, other than the extremely abstracted image of a battle with a shield-wall of infantry and...I guess some sort of super-ninja anime protagonist waifu queen?
The priority of the game has always been to capture the feeling of the game world over perfect, strict competitive balance. Having expansive unit options and expansive wargear choices and customization options is a TERRIBLE TERRIBLE idea for a balanced, tight competitive game, yet that's the route 40k has always gone.
40k has never before attempted to be a tournament game first. It has always been 'a system by which to make your model collection engage in mock battles using an agreed-upon third party as the arbiter of the rules' first.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Tyel wrote: For the OP - I think there is a tendency online especially to assume that if something doesn't seem to work in the highest level tournaments, it can never ever work anywhere. And a tendency to want a full re-write rather than some points and rules tweaks.
But equally I think if you play in a fairly friendly environment (even if people care about winning) there's often massive skill gaps between players. So if you take a good player with an Eldar list they'll still tend to do okay versus a new/clueless player with a theoretically better faction. Whereas if you swap factions it seems to create an impossible mountain to climb and you might see 90% win rates.
^this. I actually end up winning surprisingly about 50% of the games I play with my "3x8 storm guardians, avatar of khaine, 1x of each aspect warrior squad and then see what's left" super duper goofy eldar list. the problem is the eldar just don't play like eldar, they play like a lumbering horde of disposable mooks who get mowed down by even the most basic weaponry.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/12 21:46:03
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
With ya OP; I don't give a damn about winning if the story is good. Some of my best battles and moral victories came from games I lost because the stories those games told were AMAZING. This is baked into the game via lore. The Order of Our Martyred Lady changed their Order's name when the Witch Cult of Mnestteus martyred their saint; they changed the colour of their armour after they were sacrificed in droves at Armageddon and they were wiped out to the Sister at Sanctuary 101.
I picture all of these as actual games that inspired the lore- the way Bigby of the crushing hand fame from D&D was one of Ed Greenwood's characters in an actual game who invented the spell.
I play Crusade pretty much exclusively, and Id' rather fulfil agendas (which doesn't give you victory points), gain territories (DE specific), or complete a trial of sainthood than win any day of the week and twice on Sundays.
At the same time, while I dislike the tendency of some competitive players who post to assume it's the only part of the game that matters, I also don't want to alienate them or be rude to them. I think they are important to the health of the game as a whole, and I think that the expertise they bring to the discussion when genuinely critiquing mechanics in a constructive way is incredibly valuable. This is true even when i happen to disagree (which is FREQUENTLY).
Those disagreements often aren't about the actual mechanics though- they tend to be about the state of the game, or me responding to a suggestion that may work for Matched, but would unduly impact Crusade of the change was implemented as suggested.
I cannot wait for CWE Crusade! I only have a small handful of CWE- their half of Blood of the Phoenix, plus a box of Dire Avengers so that I can field it as a Patrol Detachment, plus Amallyn Shadowguide from BSF. But I think it works as a 25 PL Crusade force. I will buy any eldar Kill team products to grow it.
Finally, I also can't wait til the dex cycle is complete so that we can start making honest comparisons between forces. Every time I see comparisons between an 8th dex and a 9th, I want to scream (including many of the comparisons in this very thread). I don't, because the complaints are usually valid- it's just that 9th isn't the actual problem; edition churn is the true enemy. Advocating for solving these problems via a tenth edition will just lead to the exact same issue. The only time it doesn't is when the game is changed so radically that everything from the previous edition is blown up... And then you STILL end up with a slightly different version of the same problem when Codexes start to replace the stop-gap indexes or BRB lists.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/13 02:31:49
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.
Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.
I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.
I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.
All you have to do is fire three rounds a minute, and stand
People so quick to blame the players when this is a deliberate design by GW.
Hell some codexes have units that barely function, and when fun is subjective.
Losing every game since you buy the wrong units can be very draining.
It’s entirely by design players gravitate towards trying to make there army perform, not all players find fun in random.
Some actuly like being able to direct an army that functions.
Should not be the players fault.
I remember the way some players reacted to my playing eldar, during the broke bikes. Players who I had never even seen with my Eldar bikes on the table from before they where even good.
This attitude towards competive minded players is just toxic.
Get GW to make a good game if you want it to change.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/10/13 05:16:39
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
No it isn't. You cannot have competive esport from game that isn't competive.
Anybody who thinks 40k is competive esport is just kidding themselves. To put it politely.
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
No it isn't. You cannot have competive esport from game that isn't competive.
Anybody who thinks 40k is competive esport is just kidding themselves. To put it politely.
100% this.
Although GW is certainlty trying to make its games more appealing to competitive gamers, none of them is actually suitable for a real "competition" and never will. GW doesn't make games, it sells miniatures. It also provides a context to make them sell more minitaures, and this context is the game. But the ultimate goal is to sell more, not to have a perfectly balanced game and become the new big thing in the e-sport environment.
Well, we all have different motivations. In my younger days, I could be quite rabid about such a topic. But I’m more mellowed these days, and genuinely respect those different motivations.
Me? I play for fun. Sure I want to win my games, but it’s not the sole driving factor. I’m more interested in being a good sport than a great player. And I can adjust to my opponent.
For instance. Many years ago, when Portent was a thing, I got entirely disgruntled by someone who was known to be WAACy claimed that if we played a game, and I didn’t go WAACy, I would be disrespecting him.
Now I still do not agree with that dude - but it’s less of a binary disagreement of “me right, you wrong”. It largely depends upon the environment of the game.
At a tournament? I’ll genuinely try my best. I won’t necessarily try to Listhammer, because that doesn’t tickle my pickle. But I will play to the best of my and my chosen army’s ability. But equally, he’d need to realise that WAAC is not the sole purpose of a Tournament. For many, a Tournament is a chance to challenge themselves, and play against new people.
In a friendly game? You….shouldn’t demand someone meet you on your level and your level alone. Meet somewhere in the middle. Bit of give and take.
If it’s my preference of a heavily narrative campaign, where the aim is to tell a story and determine the outcome? You really need to think if a WAAC approach is going to add value to that effort.
But I can’t see anyone not playing to win to some degree. Just be a good sport and gracious whether you win or lose.
Fed up of Scalpers? But still want your Exclusives? Why not join us?
Apple fox wrote: People so quick to blame the players when this is a deliberate design by GW.
Hell some codexes have units that barely function, and when fun is subjective.
Losing every game since you buy the wrong units can be very draining.
It’s entirely by design players gravitate towards trying to make there army perform, not all players find fun in random.
Some actuly like being able to direct an army that functions.
Should not be the players fault.
I remember the way some players reacted to my playing eldar, during the broke bikes. Players who I had never even seen with my Eldar bikes on the table from before they where even good.
This attitude towards competive minded players is just toxic.
Get GW to make a good game if you want it to change.
While I'm quite quick to level the blame at GW, you can't deny the players play a role.
When you start an army and people ask online where to get started most people will rattle off a list of what the best units are, and by best they don't mean "most fun to use", they mean "most optimal". When a codex is released within hours people have mathhammered it to figure out the best combinations and all of this filters through the online communities and becomes common knowledge, so whenever anyone asks for advice the response is "take X over Y because they're just better for the points". And the source of this, meaning the people doing the mathhammering and optimisation are the WAAC tournament players. So yes, by repeating information sourced from WAAC players then it's the players fault.
This isn't even getting into the players who defend GW, with "It's the most balanced edition ever", neglecting to mention that the most balanced edition of 40k is still probably the least balanced war game on the market or that you need to play a certain way for that to be true, or you need to have a friendly group willing to change their army lists/rules/house rule to accommodate the opponents garbage balanced army. As long as those players are also defending GW while putting a bunch of asterisks under their argument, they too are to blame.
the_scotsman wrote: I care less about winning every game and more about whether my units authentically feel like they play like theyre supposed to in the lore of the game world, and eldar do not.
supposedly lightning-fast ninja space elf warriors who trained in the blade while you dated make fewer attacks in melee than a lumbering monkeigh astartes holding a gigantic melta cannon.
Mono-molecular chainswords that cut effortlessly through steel have the same stats as lead pipes held by chaos cultists.
the mighty avatar of the bloody handed god loses in close combat to every no-name astartes captain OK that's pretty canon-accurate I'll admit it.
Yep, this. The state of the Eldar and Chaos compared to Imperium is just pathetic. It is not about winning, it is about emulating the lore. Make them as powerful as they should and then increase the points appropriately.
Well, I would agree with you, but the background most people follow is black library fiction where chaos exists to be skeletor to the Imperium's He Man and get beaten every time to retreat shaking their fist, and the Xenos exist purely as punching bags to express the Space Marine power fantasy.
So from a certain perspective, Eldar being mowed down in droves by a normal space marine squad is perfectly fluffy and the game working as intended. Your own fault for playing an NPC faction if you didn't want to play by the background [/s].
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.
Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.
I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.
I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.
it's kind of difficult to when its all down to this weird at-the-table negotiation between you and your opponent.
40k with all the bells and whistles engaged just...is not fun for narrative scenarios, even if you try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to set up fairly tame lists. The game just naturally follows about a three-turn tempo where most units get to take one significant action before being destroyed or decimated.
You can try as hard as you want to to really personalize your list and come up with a cool story for your individual models, why they have what they have for wargear and abilities, but most likely the most satisfying story you're going to get out of them is about how that one time they moved up out of obscuring cover, charged something, killed it in one swing, and then got wiped out by the following opponent's turn.
"Got you, Yugi! Your Rubric Marines can't fall back because I have declared the tertiary kaptaris ka'tah stance two, after the secondary dacatarai ka'tah last turn!"
"So you think, Kaiba! I declared my Thousand Sons the cult of Duplicity, which means all my psykers have access to the Sorcerous Facade power! Furthermore I will spend 8 Cabal Points to invoke Cabbalistic Focus, causing the rubrics to appear behind your custodes! The Vengeance for the Wronged and Sorcerous Fullisade stratagems along with the Malefic Maelstrom infernal pact evoked earlier in the command phase allows me to double their firepower, letting me wound on 2s and 3s!"
"you think it is you who has gotten me, yugi, but it is I who have gotten you! I declare the ever-vigilant stratagem to attack your rubrics with my custodes' ranged weapons, which with the new codex are now DAMAGE 2!!"
"...which leads you straight into my trap, Kaiba, you see I now declare the stratagem Implacable Automata, reducing all damage from your attacks by 1 and triggering my All is Dust special rule!"
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.
Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.
I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.
I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.
it's kind of difficult to when its all down to this weird at-the-table negotiation between you and your opponent.
40k with all the bells and whistles engaged just...is not fun for narrative scenarios, even if you try REALLY REALLY REALLY hard to set up fairly tame lists. The game just naturally follows about a three-turn tempo where most units get to take one significant action before being destroyed or decimated.
You can try as hard as you want to to really personalize your list and come up with a cool story for your individual models, why they have what they have for wargear and abilities, but most likely the most satisfying story you're going to get out of them is about how that one time they moved up out of obscuring cover, charged something, killed it in one swing, and then got wiped out by the following opponent's turn.
True. I suppose there are different types of "narrative" play. If someone wants to "recreate" their favourite battle from the Badaab War then they are going to be disappointed going to the FLGS on 40K Saturday for a pickup game. You need to work those out in advance with like-minded people, or run it as a demo.
If by narrative we mean that models on the table behave in a manner that we imagine they do in the lore then we don't need as much pre-game negotiation and we are indeed somewhat held to the rules. I think it is fair to want the game to feel right. I may have missed some moments when they shone, but Terminators were quite bad from 3rd to 8th Edition. They died too easily - didn't feel right. On the other hand, I remember my despair when someone's Howling Banshees got into melee with my Hellblasters in 8th Ed. My despair turned to bemusement when the Banshee's attacks killed one Hellblaster and my squad punched them to death in response. Have to admit it didn't feel quite right. It's like when a Land Raider gets wiped on turn 1.
Where pre-game communication is important, in my experience, is setting the parameters for the game. Is this going to be a tourney prep game or is my opponent looking for their third game of 40K? I think that's on us as players. My assumption at a pick-up game is Matched Play at 70% list optimization (I pulled 70% out of the air) unless otherwise requested/inferred. I played a fellow last weekend for his third game of 40K and he stated that he does not like tourneys etc. I saw his list and quietly left two of my "killy" units in my miniatures case that he would not have had a real answer for. Proceeded to have a fun, engaging game.
All you have to do is fire three rounds a minute, and stand
Nurglitch wrote: What, would you be afraid of a bunch of pensioners muttering through their false teeth about how the gov't screwed their pensions, armed and armoured with antiques and jugaad tat, or hotshot young punks armed and armoured in the best of His Majesty's Armoury?
the former, if they were also followers of lovecraftian gods beyond space and time who bore bulging eyes, tentacles, and a hatred for the living.
These are a couple of wonderful posts in terms of imagery
Da Boss wrote: Well, I would agree with you, but the background most people follow is black library fiction where chaos exists to be skeletor to the Imperium's He Man and get beaten every time to retreat shaking their fist, and the Xenos exist purely as punching bags to express the Space Marine power fantasy.
So from a certain perspective, Eldar being mowed down in droves by a normal space marine squad is perfectly fluffy and the game working as intended. Your own fault for playing an NPC faction if you didn't want to play by the background [/s].
It would be kind of handy if you could adjust your Warhammer army depending on whether they were protagonists, antagonists, or mooks.
oni wrote: It's an issue stemming from the competitive community. Their highly competitive WAAC nature is like cancer spreading and making the entire organism sick.
W40K isn't a casual game anymore, it's a highly competitive E-sport. If you're not competing, you're training to compete. Get good n00b!
Gotta agree here. I cannot quite pinpoint when exactly, but at some point between 5th and 8th edition (sat out 6 and 7) something had changed. It has infected 40k like a cancer, you can even see it in the nomenclature certain people use- the talk of winrates, referring to game as "matches" and the board as "the map". All of these are terms seen in MOBA/MMO talk and not seen in tabletop games until relatively recently. Sure, you heard things akin to "winrate" in the past, but not to the extent you see it now where tactics threads have simply devolved into "take these units n00b!". Even GW themselves are leaning into the skid with things like Killteam Arena, further hammering into new player's heads that this is the new normal.
Same with tournaments- they were a thing on the side for years, and now GW has 40k tournament edition. CA literally has "grand tournament" in its name, further painting the perception of how you are supposed to approach this game. 40k was never, ever like this prior to 8th edition. It was the beer and pretzels kickabout game. Then something happened. I don't know what, but something happened like a switch going off and armies in the past that would have gotten you ostracised as TFG and being a Beardy powergamer are now considered to be normal, and if you don't want to keep up then you get left in the dust as 40k is being warped into something it never was meant to be.
I went to the Canadian 40K Grand Tournament in 1997, organized by...Games Workshop. They even published a Grand Tournament rules pack in White Dwarf. They did walk away from the tournament scene later, but its not like tourneys are a brand new thing.
I am not sure why folks who do not go to tournaments worry so much about tournaments? Narrative players can play narratively - nothing stopping them. Find a group of like-minded players and have fun how you have fun. While pickup games can have mismatched opponents, most folks have have the ability to gauge the situation and play accordingly. Some might play competitively at a tournament and then dial it back at a pick-up game against a stranger.
I think the obvious counterpoint that's relevant to the thread here is that Loyalist Marines have 2w while CSM are still on 1w. That's not the fault of tournies and it's not the fault of players, it's the fault of GW plain and simple. This slow-roll into a new balance paradigm sucks, and I feel like it's the sort of thing that would have been addressed much faster during the earlier days of GW.
The lack of a "get you by" update for Chaos Space Marines is, indeed, a head-scratcher given how long 9th has been out without a new CSM Codex. Updating them to 2W might not necessarily have been as simple as matching them in points to Loyalist equivalents due to associated changes to auras, Core and Stratagems etc, but it would seem they could have used Death Guard as an azimuth check for a CSM Index? I just play the game - not a game designer!
Its not good for the game - they should have been before any Campaign supplements etc.
All you have to do is fire three rounds a minute, and stand
The reason I don’t like warhammer competitive is that it’s what is balanced around now. So many fun and cool rules have just kinda been nuked for the convenience of a more “balanced” competitive scene. Things like orks losing dakka dakka dakka, reserve points getting rid of things like send in the next wave, basically anything actually fun and unique within armies. I had hopes for open play from 8th, but the comp scene is a major cash cow to milk I guess.
"Us Blood Axes hav lernt' a lot from da humies. How best ta kill 'em, fer example."
— Korporal Snagbrat of the Dreadblade Kommandos
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: The reason I don’t like warhammer competitive is that it’s what is balanced around now. So many fun and cool rules have just kinda been nuked for the convenience of a more “balanced” competitive scene. Things like orks losing dakka dakka dakka, reserve points getting rid of things like send in the next wave, basically anything actually fun and unique within armies. I had hopes for open play from 8th, but the comp scene is a major cash cow to milk I guess.
DDD was heavy dice rolling. Not sure how that is less fluff than what we have now. You're totally free to play an asymmetric game where you can bring in more points than your opponent - just don't expect them to like it.
And for the record - Thousand Sons are now way more unique than they've ever been as it has been with all the new codexes.
Some_Call_Me_Tim wrote: The reason I don’t like warhammer competitive is that it’s what is balanced around now. So many fun and cool rules have just kinda been nuked for the convenience of a more “balanced” competitive scene. Things like orks losing dakka dakka dakka, reserve points getting rid of things like send in the next wave, basically anything actually fun and unique within armies. I had hopes for open play from 8th, but the comp scene is a major cash cow to milk I guess.
DDD was heavy dice rolling. Not sure how that is less fluff than what we have now. You're totally free to play an asymmetric game where you can bring in more points than your opponent - just don't expect them to like it.
And for the record - Thousand Sons are now way more unique than they've ever been as it has been with all the new codexes.
Heavy dice rolling really only affects comp stuff with chess clocks. And it’s random and wacky, way more fitting of orks than gakky rapidfire. Now thousand sons may be unique, but I bet you I could do some way more fun things with em in previous editions. Competitive balance just makes games blander, it’s a given. I used to enjoy playing Mordhau but comp centric balance has really brought it down.
Honestly I think 40k should take more influence from gorkamorka, you can’t really even feasibly do that competitively, which makes it a blast to play since you don’t get the gitz you find in tourneys.
"Us Blood Axes hav lernt' a lot from da humies. How best ta kill 'em, fer example."
— Korporal Snagbrat of the Dreadblade Kommandos
