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40k ... and the obvious ties into MtG, attract a certain type of player.

That player is not bad, weak, unskilled, etc. They just are excited about toying with a deck or list and maxing it out to the best of their abilities and then winding it up and watch it play itself out to see what happens.

It is not wargaming in the traditional sense, but it has replaced wargaming on a lot of fronts and has been warmly embraced by large swathes of our communities.

Actual wargames are rare these days and you have to dig deep to find communities or players that will even play them in the first place.

MtG or 40k players that love list building can still enjoy wargaming, and I know people that do both so don't be too sure that listbuilders in 40k would just flounder in a wargame.

A lot probably would, but those players also have no interest in wargaming in its truest sense anyway, they are after a war-themed game so their inability to perform well in a wargame is irrelevant to their interests.

 auticus wrote:
40k ... and the obvious ties into MtG, attract a certain type of player.

That player is not bad, weak, unskilled, etc. They just are excited about toying with a deck or list and maxing it out to the best of their abilities and then winding it up and watch it play itself out to see what happens.

It is not wargaming in the traditional sense, but it has replaced wargaming on a lot of fronts and has been warmly embraced by large swathes of our communities.

Actual wargames are rare these days and you have to dig deep to find communities or players that will even play them in the first place.

MtG or 40k players that love list building can still enjoy wargaming, and I know people that do both so don't be too sure that listbuilders in 40k would just flounder in a wargame.

A lot probably would, but those players also have no interest in wargaming in its truest sense anyway, they are after a war-themed game so their inability to perform well in a wargame is irrelevant to their interests.

^ Exactly this. Exalted.

I am a lifelong gamer- I played my first game of D&D in grade 3. I think I wrote my first RPG in grade 7. I've lost track of all the RPG games I've played throughout the years. I discovered miniature games through Rogue Trader and Space Hulk at the tag end of high school but didn't venture as far into other miniature games- don't get me wrong, I've tried quite a few, but RPGs are cheaper and I have more history playing them.

CCGs came at the beginning of university and I went as deep down that rabbit hole as I did with RPGs.

And honestly, it's that fusion of interests that makes 9th ed Crusade the perfect game for me. It combines RPG/ CCG and Wargame elements. When I play a Crusade game, I feel like I'm doing all three things at the same time. No other game that I've ever played does that.

Deadnight wrote:

No one has that problem with infinity because no one plays infinity in the first place.

I just got home from a game of Infinity at the FLGS. It's definitely nowhere near as popular as 40k but I would much rather play Infinity with a group of 3-4 guys than play 40k with hundreds of local players. I still like the GW models but the more I play other games, the less I enjoy 40k. Between Necromunda, Kill Team, WMH, Infinity, Titanicus, and 40k, I definitely think 40k is the least balanced and worst ruleset.

Toofast wrote:

Between Necromunda, Kill Team, WMH, Infinity, Titanicus, and 40k, I definitely think 40k is the least balanced and worst ruleset.

Those are all skirmish with 5-10 models though, except WMH maybe. A completely different experience from 40k.

Necromunda, my current favorite game, is much easier to break than 40k. That is a game that really needs a GM and/or people with a super friendly mindset to avoid min/maxing at all cost.

 auticus wrote:
40k ... and the obvious ties into MtG, attract a certain type of player.

If you think 40k is like MtG, you don't understand MtG.

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
40k ... and the obvious ties into MtG, attract a certain type of player.

If you think 40k is like MtG, you don't understand MtG.

This. Essentially any time someone claims 40k is like MtG you can just stop reading the post because all of it is going to be uninformed sterotypes anyways.

In the past 40k gognards have made a boogeyman out of MtG because of the more competitive nature of its players and the non-narrative nature of the game and that has held up till today. Any resemblance of synergy or interlocking rules that makes an army more powerful is perceived as a combo therefore automatically considered "beardy", "cheesy" or "WAAC". GW printing rules on cards has essentially been the final straw for them because using 2 commando points to get +1 to wound on a unit that is already benefiting from a nearby aura absolutely feels the same to them as casting animate dead on a worldgorger dragon.

Both GW and WotC are greedy bastards who will never fail to stoop to new lows to get even more money and both regularly screw up royally, but if GW would have put half as much thought into their game as WotC did into MtG, we would have a much better game for both competitive and casual play right now. Despite all their progress during 8th and 9th, 40k is still lagging at least a decade behind MtG, if not two. 7th has been their combo winter, 8th was their mirrodin/raffinity, 9th is the lorwyn/alara of 40k.

Hecaton wrote:

 auticus wrote:
40k ... and the obvious ties into MtG, attract a certain type of player.

If you think 40k is like MtG, you don't understand MtG.

Don't try to go down this road again. You know exactly what he means, and if you cannot see the similarities between it and modern 40k compared with older editions then you are more delusional than I thought...

You guys totally missed some great points about community and professionalism that permeates many other communities that simply do not exist in the neckbeard arena.

Having played sports at a multitude of levels, I can tell you from personal experience, that it is never a classy move to "run up the score" on an opponent. It is seen as a poor display of showboating meant to do nothing other than humiliate the other guys (who people assume are doing their best as well). Baseball and hockey have a few "unwritten rules" meant to safeguard against that kind of behavior... so tread lightly.

But I mean, at the end of the day, just about every other hobby/interest has a community of "better" individuals bending down to lend a hand to those striving to get to those levels. That's called mentorship and stewardship over the future of the hobby. Continually slapping players around because they cannot play up to your level is just going to isolate your community more and more until GW nukes it from orbit like they did the Fantasy Battles crowd. I'm wondering if 40k doesn't have a large surplus of those WHFB doods now gatekeeping that game like they did when their precious died. Kind of reeks of the same mentality.

Being "elite" and "gatekeeping" the hobby is ugly no matter what form it comes in, and there's a lot of that going on in this particular community. Not sure yet if it is willingly or blindly, though. I'm truly hoping it is the latter.

[REDACTED] - I was informed that sharing information about sales slides etc can land me into hot water even if I didn't sign their NDA. So editing to avoid that mess.

I understand that Mtg and 40k are both about deckbuilding and combo chaining and that 40k's design is borrowed heavily from the MtG pipeline. I also understand that 40k and AOS borrow heavily from the MtG cycling of power / cards to get you to buy new stuff regularly.

I know both of those things as fact rather than opinion or guessing because I have seen with my own eyeballs that their sales managers had to get familiar with how MtG works because design etc borrowed from that game. It was from seeing that information with my own eyes that leads me to say the things I say.

Any talk about MtG being about competitiveness, cheesy, WAAC, non narrative, etc... are not words that I used.

Funny thing:

Just like 40k, there are also ways to do Magic with more of a narrative... But players have to be the ones who decide to actually do it.

We used to do one-on-one match-ups with escalating sideboards to upgrade characters in later games; these matchups would determine emperors and generals and then we'd end with a team match played emperor style.

Grimtuff 804474 11352085 wrote:
Don't try to go down this road again. You know exactly what he means, and if you cannot see the similarities between it and modern 40k compared with older editions then you are more delusional than I thought...

Oh feth yeah I'm willing to go down this road again, because for a supposed game designer Auticus has no idea what he's talking about. 40k does not have hidden information, there's no deck of cards to shuffle, the rules aren't written nearly as well, there are spatial elements to 40k gameplay that don't exist in Magic (unless you bust out a Chaos Orb)... they're not similar.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
[REDACTED] - I was informed that sharing information about sales slides etc can land me into hot water even if I didn't sign their NDA. So editing to avoid that mess.

I understand that Mtg and 40k are both about deckbuilding and combo chaining and that 40k's design is borrowed heavily from the MtG pipeline. I also understand that 40k and AOS borrow heavily from the MtG cycling of power / cards to get you to buy new stuff regularly.

I know both of those things as fact rather than opinion or guessing because I have seen with my own eyeballs that their sales managers had to get familiar with how MtG works because design etc borrowed from that game. It was from seeing that information with my own eyes that leads me to say the things I say.

Any talk about MtG being about competitiveness, cheesy, WAAC, non narrative, etc... are not words that I used.

To be frank, without evidence I don't believe you. Whose sales slides were you sharing? GW's?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Purifying Tempest wrote:
You guys totally missed some great points about community and professionalism that permeates many other communities that simply do not exist in the neckbeard arena.

Having played sports at a multitude of levels, I can tell you from personal experience, that it is never a classy move to "run up the score" on an opponent. It is seen as a poor display of showboating meant to do nothing other than humiliate the other guys (who people assume are doing their best as well). Baseball and hockey have a few "unwritten rules" meant to safeguard against that kind of behavior... so tread lightly.

No, there's no point in treading lightly because you've completely misunderstood the situation. Since 40k uses points as tiebreakers (beyond win/loss) there's every incentive to run up the score as high as possible. It's like asking someone why they don't stop playing hard at the end of the first part of a two-legged contest.

What you're describing is, like, refusing to accept someone's forfeit, which is not something I've ever seen happen. When a game is won, it's won. What I'm talking about is that there's nothing wrong with blasting a home run top of the 1st inning if you can.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
But I mean, at the end of the day, just about every other hobby/interest has a community of "better" individuals bending down to lend a hand to those striving to get to those levels. That's called mentorship and stewardship over the future of the hobby. Continually slapping players around because they cannot play up to your level is just going to isolate your community more and more until GW nukes it from orbit like they did the Fantasy Battles crowd. I'm wondering if 40k doesn't have a large surplus of those WHFB doods now gatekeeping that game like they did when their precious died. Kind of reeks of the same mentality.

GW killed WHFB. Nice of you to blame it on the playerbase lol.

Hecaton wrote:
there are spatial elements to 40k gameplay that don't exist in Magic (unless you bust out a Chaos Orb)... they're not similar.

those games do not follow similar sales designs because the rules are of different quality and some elements from one game do not exist in the other?

ok, so also MtG and Pokemon are not having similar concept, because Pokemon does not use Mana and the rules are not as well written

 kodos wrote:
those games do not follow similar sales designs because the rules are of different quality and some elements from one game do not exist in the other?

ok, so also MtG and Pokemon are not having similar concept, because Pokemon does not use Mana and the rules are not as well written

First of all, the fact that MtG has randomized packs and 40k does not means that the sales designs are vastly different. Second of all, auticus was implying that the *gameplay* of 9th was somehow MtG-like.

And your attempt to "gotcha" me by saying that my comment would imply that MtG and Pokemon aren't alike is just pathetically laughable. Pokemon uses a card-based resource system like mana.

Hecaton wrote:

Grimtuff 804474 11352085 wrote:
Don't try to go down this road again. You know exactly what he means, and if you cannot see the similarities between it and modern 40k compared with older editions then you are more delusional than I thought...

Oh feth yeah I'm willing to go down this road again, because for a supposed game designer Auticus has no idea what he's talking about. 40k does not have hidden information, there's no deck of cards to shuffle, the rules aren't written nearly as well, there are spatial elements to 40k gameplay that don't exist in Magic (unless you bust out a Chaos Orb)... they're not similar.

Keep fumbling through that wood, you might eventually find some trees there...

 Grimtuff wrote:

Keep fumbling through that wood, you might eventually find some trees there...

Sounds like you haven't thought too heavily on the topic, and don't actually understand MtG. Come back when you do.

Hecaton - GW indeed killed FB... as a response to how insular the community became. It became a toilet-circling bowl of poop between GWs lack of desire to improve the situation and the community doing anything other than... do exactly what the community is doing to 40k right now. Instead of continuing to carry that drama forward, GW nuked the game... neckbeards be damned.

I remember this explicitly because I was for all functionality gatekept out of the FB scene by the people GW nuked the game over. I would have been a fantasy player had the community not been so insular and toxic towards their new players and GW. If you do not think the community had anything to do with the fate of WHFB, then you are very likely one of the people that got it nuked.

At the end of the day, GW pulled the trigger, but the community loaded the stupid gun for them to begin with.

Hecaton wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Keep fumbling through that wood, you might eventually find some trees there...

Sounds like you haven't thought too heavily on the topic, and don't actually understand MtG. Come back when you do.

When has not understanding what you're talking about ever been a disqualifier on these boards?

Hecaton wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Keep fumbling through that wood, you might eventually find some trees there...

Sounds like you haven't thought too heavily on the topic, and don't actually understand MtG. Come back when you do.

Okay then, I'll spell it out for you. 40k and MTG not being literally the same, which is what you seem to think is what people are implying is NOT the same as modern 40k borrowing CCG-esq elements to a tabletop game, which they clearly are doing.

If you cannot see this then there is an Egyptian river you must need pulling out of.

 Grimtuff wrote:

Okay then, I'll spell it out for you. 40k and MTG not being literally the same, which is what you seem to think is what people are implying is NOT the same as modern 40k borrowing CCG-esq elements to a tabletop game, which they clearly are doing.

If you cannot see this then there is an Egyptian river you must need pulling out of.

No, there are no ccg-esque elements in 40k's gameplay. There's no deck of cards to shuffle, no randomized packs to buy. Again, you're in Dunning-Kruger territory with your understanding of these games.

Hecaton wrote:

 Grimtuff wrote:

Okay then, I'll spell it out for you. 40k and MTG not being literally the same, which is what you seem to think is what people are implying is NOT the same as modern 40k borrowing CCG-esq elements to a tabletop game, which they clearly are doing.

If you cannot see this then there is an Egyptian river you must need pulling out of.

No, there are no ccg-esque elements in 40k's gameplay. There's no deck of cards to shuffle, no randomized packs to buy. Again, you're in Dunning-Kruger territory with your understanding of these games.

Yup. You have no idea what you're talking about. Bye.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
Hecaton - GW indeed killed FB... as a response to how insular the community became. It became a toilet-circling bowl of poop between GWs lack of desire to improve the situation and the community doing anything other than... do exactly what the community is doing to 40k right now. Instead of continuing to carry that drama forward, GW nuked the game... neckbeards be damned.

GW had a lack of desire to improve the game. They failed to balance it, and constructed the rules such that it was incredibly inaccessible, with a massive buy-in to play, because they wanted to extract more money from people.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
I remember this explicitly because I was for all functionality gatekept out of the FB scene by the people GW nuked the game over. I would have been a fantasy player had the community not been so insular and toxic towards their new players and GW. If you do not think the community had anything to do with the fate of WHFB, then you are very likely one of the people that got it nuked.

I sincerely doubt that that is a factual retelling of events.

Purifying Tempest wrote:
At the end of the day, GW pulled the trigger, but the community loaded the stupid gun for them to begin with.

Nope! GW made decisions that resulted in short-term gains at the expense of long-term profit - they made it so you needed to buy bigger units to keep playing, which then made new players not want to get into the game, and then they torpedoed the setting in a way which pissed a lot of people off. Any attempt to put this on the playerbase is authoritarian-submissive corporate bootlicking.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Grimtuff wrote:


Yup. You have no idea what you're talking about. Bye.

The fact that you can't explain it shows me that nobody should take you seriously on any claims about game design. I gave specific examples and you refused to engage because you know you don't have an argument.

Hecaton wrote:
First of all, the fact that MtG has randomized packs and 40k does not means that the sales designs are vastly different. Second of all, auticus was implying that the *gameplay* of 9th was somehow MtG-like.

both are live style games, that sell on the base of a changing meta which comes from ongoing releases of new units/cards

and that there are no randomized packs has nothing to do with it, as while in 40k you might know how the stuff looks, you don't know how useful this will be as the rules keep changing

just because you point on the things that are different while ignoring everything that is similar and call others of not understanding what it is, I now doubt you every tried to keep up with the 40k meta

Purifying Tempest wrote:
At the end of the day, GW pulled the trigger, but the community loaded the stupid gun for them to begin with.

well, the situation was very different in Europe and the US for Warhammer, as we here had nearly a situation similar to Blood Bowl were the community took the rules over, it was just the tournament crowed that forged a "only official stuff counts" that put the nail in the coffin with 8th (as all that was achieved was gone and forgotten because now GW will listen and really try to make a good game)

it is also different for 40k here, the more GW mess up, the more independent the community becomes and does things on its own (we are not far off a community edition again like we had in 5th)

I shared this post this morning with some people I work with - in the same industry - who also have seen the sales slides by GW where they discuss magic the gathering and needing to get managers to know how that plays.

We had a good laugh at the "40k is nothing like CCG you have no idea what you're talking about" speak.

Today's "wargames" have so much of the CCG bloodline flowing through them that there are now game dev seminars on the topic and how to incorporate those baseline principals into new games to hook players and churn them.

It is correct to say that 40k is not a CCG because there are no cards to shuffle and decks to buy. But that is entirely not what is being discussed in how they are similar as to be entirely off topic and derailing other than to be the guy to go

"TECHNICALLY... its not a card game because it has no cards".

Well done. That is correct.

 auticus wrote:
I shared this post this morning with some people I work with - in the same industry - who also have seen the sales slides by GW where they discuss magic the gathering and needing to get managers to know how that plays.

We had a good laugh at the "40k is nothing like CCG you have no idea what you're talking about" speak.

Today's "wargames" have so much of the CCG bloodline flowing through them that there are now game dev seminars on the topic and how to incorporate those baseline principals into new games to hook players and churn them.

It is correct to say that 40k is not a CCG because there are no cards to shuffle and decks to buy. But that is entirely not what is being discussed in how they are similar as to be entirely off topic and derailing other than to be the guy to go

"TECHNICALLY... its not a card game because it has no cards".

Well done. That is correct.

i'm legitimately curious, what exactly is being taken from CCG's in modern 40k design? Is it the "combos" that you get between units?

 kodos wrote:

both are live style games, that sell on the base of a changing meta which comes from ongoing releases of new units/cards

and that there are no randomized packs has nothing to do with it, as while in 40k you might know how the stuff looks, you don't know how useful this will be as the rules keep changing

No, that has everything to do with it, because accessibility is not a lottery. There's no equivalent of /r/mtgfinance for 40k, because how the game is sold is vastly different.

 kodos wrote:
just because you point on the things that are different while ignoring everything that is similar and call others of not understanding what it is, I now doubt you every tried to keep up with the 40k meta

Among things that are different between MtG and 40k are the things that make Magic a *ccg*. 40k is not collectible in the sense that magic is, because it is not sold in random packs (the SM heroes line nonwithstanding) and it's not a card game. You can talk about any similarities and differences between the games, but 40k is emphatically not a ccg, or ccg-like.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I shared this post this morning with some people I work with - in the same industry - who also have seen the sales slides by GW where they discuss magic the gathering and needing to get managers to know how that plays.

We had a good laugh at the "40k is nothing like CCG you have no idea what you're talking about" speak.

The braying and bleating of a bunch of idiots doesn't matter to me.

 auticus wrote:
Today's "wargames" have so much of the CCG bloodline flowing through them that there are now game dev seminars on the topic and how to incorporate those baseline principals into new games to hook players and churn them.

It is correct to say that 40k is not a CCG because there are no cards to shuffle and decks to buy. But that is entirely not what is being discussed in how they are similar as to be entirely off topic and derailing other than to be the guy to go

"TECHNICALLY... its not a card game because it has no cards".

Well done. That is correct.

Yes, and it's meaningful too. There are people in this thread who talk about the gameplay of 40k and how it's CCG-like, and I notice you're dancing around naming specifics because the things you're talking about are not specific to CCGs - that's marketing products in general.

Hecaton wrote:
but 40k is emphatically not a ccg, or ccg-like.

it is not about that one is a card game while the other is a miniature games, yes this is a big difference

it is about that both are lifestyle games, were chasing the meta is the main point of the game

but if you want to go down that route, 40k is not a wargame either, nor a tabletop game, just because it uses minis as tokes does not make it one
if 40k and MtG are not similar because one uses cards while the other does not (and random packs are not the only way to buy cards), than 40k and chess are the same because both use different painted miniatures as tokes

 kodos wrote:
it is not about that one is a card game while the other is a miniature games, yes this is a big difference

it is about that both are lifestyle games, were chasing the meta is the main point of the game

Well, a lifestyle game is not the same thing as a CCG. So you're already making a nonsensical argument. Try again. If you want to say, "40k and MtG are both lifestyle games" I'd agree with you, but that's not what you're saying.

 kodos wrote:
but if you want to go down that route, 40k is not a wargame either, nor a tabletop game, just because it uses minis as tokes does not make it one
if 40k and MtG are not similar because one uses cards while the other does not (and random packs are not the only way to buy cards), than 40k and chess are the same because both use different painted miniatures as tokes

I'd call 40k a wargame. That can be subjective, though, so if you don't like that terminology that's fine. But 40k is *definitely* a tabletop game - it's an analog game played on a table. I'll leave your chess analogy be because it's just... silly.

Hecaton wrote:

 kodos wrote:

both are live style games, that sell on the base of a changing meta which comes from ongoing releases of new units/cards

and that there are no randomized packs has nothing to do with it, as while in 40k you might know how the stuff looks, you don't know how useful this will be as the rules keep changing

No, that has everything to do with it, because accessibility is not a lottery. There's no equivalent of /r/mtgfinance for 40k, because how the game is sold is vastly different.

 kodos wrote:
just because you point on the things that are different while ignoring everything that is similar and call others of not understanding what it is, I now doubt you every tried to keep up with the 40k meta

Among things that are different between MtG and 40k are the things that make Magic a *ccg*. 40k is not collectible in the sense that magic is, because it is not sold in random packs (the SM heroes line nonwithstanding) and it's not a card game. You can talk about any similarities and differences between the games, but 40k is emphatically not a ccg, or ccg-like.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 auticus wrote:
I shared this post this morning with some people I work with - in the same industry - who also have seen the sales slides by GW where they discuss magic the gathering and needing to get managers to know how that plays.

We had a good laugh at the "40k is nothing like CCG you have no idea what you're talking about" speak.

The braying and bleating of a bunch of idiots doesn't matter to me.

 auticus wrote:
Today's "wargames" have so much of the CCG bloodline flowing through them that there are now game dev seminars on the topic and how to incorporate those baseline principals into new games to hook players and churn them.

It is correct to say that 40k is not a CCG because there are no cards to shuffle and decks to buy. But that is entirely not what is being discussed in how they are similar as to be entirely off topic and derailing other than to be the guy to go

"TECHNICALLY... its not a card game because it has no cards".

Well done. That is correct.

Yes, and it's meaningful too. There are people in this thread who talk about the gameplay of 40k and how it's CCG-like, and I notice you're dancing around naming specifics because the things you're talking about are not specific to CCGs - that's marketing products in general.

I'm sure they don't care for the braying of idiots on forums either.

But sure, like a ccg the "stacking buffs" onto a unit to power it up to punch above its activation cost (points cost), the reactionary or out of phase cards/actions (stratagems), turn based currency to use (command points). The churn of the meta isn't via introducing more cards, but by adjusting the relative points and abilities of the units, similar to new sets coming out.

They're really reaching a point of similarity now in core underlying message/principals and I think you'd need be to be completely blinded to wider gaming culture to see it.

Funny that they moved in this direction and "esports 40k" came into being as well.

i'm legitimately curious, what exactly is being taken from CCG's in modern 40k design? Is it the "combos" that you get between units?

* Unit variety is important. In traditional wargames - unit variety is fairly stagnant. A foot soldier will largely be a foot soldier across all factions with a minor variation of its stats and abilities. In the newer paradigm every unit should at least appear to be different.

* The game should be about building up effective combinations with your list or deck. Much of the fun we have found in marketing from a lot of players is the joy of building up a deck or a list and tinkering with its math and then winding it up and watching it go. In traditional wargaming, the lists were largely not as important as no one in historical wargaming wants to play a game where one side is going to stomp the other side because their list is over bearing. In traditional wargaming, the game should be decided on the table and the lists be fairly equal to each other, or the scenario equalize the two sides. In a listbuilding / deckbuilding game, the game is largely decided by who has the best list, and if the two are equal, then gets decided on the table. In a CCG styled game, the primary design feature is building to see who has the best deck and letting it play itself out.

Typically in traditional wargaming if one side has a superior force to the other (a fairly common occurrence) the weaker side has objectives they can achieve for victory other than a military wipe them out victory. For example, against overwhelming odds you may simply have to have a unit alive on the board for four turns or something to hold the enemy off.

Other examples - you may need to assassinate the enemy general or an important hero. Things that are possible to do with a weaker force other than straight up fight.

Other examples in traditional wargaming may be a superior force that has a negative battleground experience, such as Agincourt where the knights sloughed through thick mud in the face of an arrow storm. The french "army list" was decidedly more powerful but the scenario evened that out by having the weaker list in better position.

In a CCG styled tabletop game, the list's weight is the most important element. The players want to see their creation wind up and go. In a CCG styled tabletop game, elements that even out two opposing forces is seen as a negative play experience because the primary experience is to build the most powerful deck and wind it up and go to see who made the best overall force.

* In a CCG styled game, where listbuilding is the key, the main important element is identifying combinations. Having an army of five units of tactical marines, a jump squad, a tank, and a captain where nothing makes the other things better is not exciting to the target audience.

Having the captain grant his tactical marines bonuses and then the presence of a tank giving other bonuses (hypothetical obviously) and being able to weigh points cost to bonuses granted from a myriad of choices, most of them false choices, is what draws the excitement.

Standard wargames do not do this other than at their most basic.

* CCG style games are designed to be less about maneuvering (which is a key element of wargaming) and more about getting stuck in the action. The less you have of facings, flanks, rears, etc... and the more you can just basically "tap unit, have unit attack" in some form is highly desirable because maneuvering and having to wait for the action is not seen as desirable and is seen by many of the target audience to be boring. Additionally some call maneuver "gatekeeping" because if I have a solid combo-chained unit built up but then I have to also maneuver it to get good effect out of it, that is a negative play experience and some call that "gatekeeping" for tabletop skill, when that tabletop skill is not what we are designing for.

This is where you see things like deepstrike/assault or in AOS just being able to move 30" or whatever and engage in combat in turn 1 without needing to worry about maneuvering into a good position to do it. Particularly deepstrike or teleport assault.

It is very akin to "I tap my unit of terminators and they attack your unit" because you get the same effect: the terminators appear and attack what you want them to. Now some layering comes into play, where we can layer a bubble-wrap around my important bits.

This is akin to trigger-effects where a card can be triggered to block the attack and take the damage instead if it is on the field.

They both provide the same type of experience. You have to know to bubble wrap of course, so that is the skill, but you learn that from watching a couple of games.

* the sales model of both CCG and 40k are very similar in that they are intentionally designed to make the competitive players want to buy the latest thing to stay competitive. In MtG that is new card packs and formats that they have to have to play in the latest tournaments. In 40k its shuffling points around to make some good things not so good anymore and some things not so good are pretty good now.

It is a fallacy to say all new things are the most powerful, because 40k has a long history of that not being true.

It is however accurate to state that the yearly points change on top of new books changes what is good and keeps competitive players buying new models to keep up.

It was this model particularly that was discussed and why the store managers were encouraged to look into MtG if they didn't have experience with it because that was their heralding of what was to come (this was several years ago when I was still playing when I was shown pictures of that presentation - and ultimately one of the main reasons I sold all my stuff shortly after).

* Resource management is a thing that you see a lot of games start to employ. In MtG it is land decks and things that provide "mana" that you provide for in your deck building. In 40k or AOS it is command points or other things you can harvest via list building that provide special combinations of powers or enhancements.

In traditional wargames, resource management is a thing in long term campaigns where you have food, ammo, etc... logistics... but doesn't play on the tabletop.

We see battletech start to drift more into this territory now with lance formations giving extra resources and powers (also akin to the deckbuilding / listbuilding aspect discussed above).

* Timing. Traditional wargames took an afternoon. Part of the allure of MtG gamers is the professional sporting scene that came to be in 1996 or 1997 or whatever it was when espn broadcast the first world championship. Timing is now such a thing where the games have to be done in a format that is digestable. It has to be able to be played in 60-120 minutes, has to allow for multiple tournament format games to happen in an afternoon, and has to be something that could help the "esport" flourish, as that draws more and more players. It can be argued from a marketing sense that the esport nature of MtG is much of why its grossly popular and profitable. Now... 40k fails at this but not on purpose. They amped lethality up to 11 to try to achieve this; their failure comes from the layers of rules they have stomping on each other though. AOS specifically was designed to be done in 2 hours or so for tournaments when it first dropped (and has similar problems).

Those are the main things that come to mind when we see how traditional wargames have drifted into more of a CCG territory, short of being cards themselves.

In 2019 I played a prototype card game for 40k, which was the game of 40k put into card format that was to be released as a Steam game.

It played very very closely to the actual game of 40k. It felt 95% like playing with models only with cards instead.

Those are the top things that come to my mind when I have to work on projects that have MtG injected into them from a tabletop game perspective or a video game that simulates a tabletop game perspective. From a marketing standpoint, traditional wargames simply do not sell. The excitement of playing them has not been there for about 15 years or more. The CCG phenomenon swept into tabletop gaming I'd say ... around when Warmachine became a thing in the early 00s. That was the first real popular game that I remember that started down that path, and other games - to include the behemoth GW games - took notice in their own marketing and began following suit some years after that.

If you wish to plug your head into the sand and say they are nothing alike - god bless you. However there are a number of designers that specifically use the term to describe gaming projects on scope and design documents and it is a term that I will use because I understand what it communicates as do many others.

Dudeface wrote:

I'm sure they don't care for the braying of idiots on forums either.

They don't, but luckily I've got a more coherent argument than them, so I think I'm in the clear.

Dudeface wrote:
But sure, like a ccg the "stacking buffs" onto a unit to power it up to punch above its activation cost (points cost), the reactionary or out of phase cards/actions (stratagems), turn based currency to use (command points). The churn of the meta isn't via introducing more cards, but by adjusting the relative points and abilities of the units, similar to new sets coming out.

None of those are specific to CCGs. What you're describing is something that is generally common to lifestyle/"games as a service" than anything specific to CCGs. Cost mechanics are not specific to CCGs, reactive plays are not specific to CCGs. So you don't really have an argument here.

Dudeface wrote:
They're really reaching a point of similarity now in core underlying message/principals and I think you'd need be to be completely blinded to wider gaming culture to see it.

Surely if this message was real you'd be able to say what it was. I don't think you can in a coherent way.

Dudeface wrote:
Funny that they moved in this direction and "esports 40k" came into being as well.

By definition "esports" means it's more like a video game, not a CCG.