Is tournament play the biggest problem with 40k

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**nou**

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
ERJAK wrote:

TLR: "OP apparently mystified at the existence of competitive cardgames not made for bored grandmas, does not make connection. "

Bridge was an obsession among upper-level commanders during WW II. The fact that modern society no longer has the patience or intellect for it isn't the sick burn you think it is.

It is still the favourite game of academic matematicians, sits right besides chess and go, and out of that trio, bridge has been cracked by computers last, only a year ago. And AI still can't bid.

I'm not at all surprised by it's popularity amongst commanders during WW II given the set of mental skills it trains. But apparently, it is bored grandmas game... Well, MTG got me bored in about a year.

**Commissar von Toussaint**

nou wrote:
It is still the favourite game of academic matematicians, sits right besides chess and go, and out of that trio, bridge has been cracked by computers last, only a year ago.

But apparently, it is bored grandmas game... Well, MTG got me bored in about a year.

I recall reading that when selecting commanders, Eisenhower and Marshall always asked if they played bridge, and if they were any good at it.

It's something I may take up now that I have more time. I'm a big fan of Euchre, an indigenous four-handed card game that uses a reduced deck. You can always spot the deployed Michigan National Guardsmen because if they notice a foursome, somebody breaks out a Euchre deck. I remember playing a game on a packing crate on a trans-Atlantic KC-135 flight, with people shouting out "What's trump?" through our ear protection. Good times.

**nou**

Commissar von Toussaint wrote:
nou wrote:
It is still the favourite game of academic matematicians, sits right besides chess and go, and out of that trio, bridge has been cracked by computers last, only a year ago.

But apparently, it is bored grandmas game... Well, MTG got me bored in about a year.

I recall reading that when selecting commanders, Eisenhower and Marshall always asked if they played bridge, and if they were any good at it.

It's something I may take up now that I have more time. I'm a big fan of Euchre, an indigenous four-handed card game that uses a reduced deck. You can always spot the deployed Michigan National Guardsmen because if they notice a foursome, somebody breaks out a Euchre deck. I remember playing a game on a packing crate on a trans-Atlantic KC-135 flight, with people shouting out "What's trump?" through our ear protection. Good times.

I edited my post after you wrote this, so I'll repeat myslef - I'm not at all surprised by the connection between bridge and military. And yes, keeping a deck of cards in my backpack and dealing a game whenever there's 15 minutes window was a norm for me for 5 years

**vict0988**

nou wrote:
Tyel wrote:

I guess if you have 2 friends and they each only have 2k points and that's it, and you just play those 2 possible games over and over you will solve that game. But I suspect such would be true for every miniatures game played with such restrictions. Its not a realistic assessment of 40k as a whole.

That is exactly what I was writing about, and it is a very realistic assessment of 40k - majority of players do not attend tournaments and play within small groups only, down to garragehammer players and their friends and families. This is why there is maelstrom, why there were campaign books and a lot of built-in match randomisation stuff built in. Exactly because any particular GT matchup "riddle" as yours above is solvable in a very small number of games, so playing with those same opponents, with small collections (say, 3k points, so you have some leway for "surprise" at the table, otherwise lists are perfectly known before each and every game) becomes pointless very, very fast.

And it is funny, that you did include lists, but didn't include the actual mission nor deployment zones in your little riddle, that is meant to convince me, that 40k is not first and foremost list dependent Just compare your riddle to how chess riddles look like: you're presented with a board state and asked a question about solution of a very tiny, couple of moves long fragment of the game. If I know how chess pieces work, I can try to solve any chess riddle. But I can't solve your riddle, because I don't know neither IG nor DG codices - I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge. But because you misunderstood my post completely, I'll elaborate a bit - it wasn't about "there is nothing to think about during the game" or "lists play themselves", only that if you count individual decision points that happen before the match and their impact on the flow and outcome of the game, vs those, that happen during the match, most of them happens before. You only have a couple of dozen decision points during the actual 40k game - you literally only decide where to move, what to shoot, what to charge, when spend CPs etc, and since you start the game with about a dozen and a half units and the attrition is so steep, there are only so few decision points in the game. And most of those are not really decisions at all, target priority is usually obvious. Everything that happens before the game boils down to encyclopedic knowledge and mathhammer, but because you're building lists out of literal thousands of options (if you're looking at the entirety of 40k), there is way, way, way more decision making, than during the game. But when you take out this list building stage out of the game, like in friends&family situation, there is little left to solve.

And no, not every miniatures game is like that, including 40k - you just have to step outside 2000pts GT. Maelstrom makes 40k completely unsolvable, that is part of the reason, why it is dismissed by competitive players. The only other GW game I play, OG Necromunda, can also be replayed over, and over, and over, and over again with those same few sets of gang models, and it doesn't get repetitive, because of all built in randomness.

I hope I made it clear enough this time around...

Now beyond our little wargaming sandbox - you can endlessly repeat chess with the same opponent, or play Bridge endlessly with those same three people over and over again and have new challenge every time. I'll focus a bit on bridge, as this is my main competitive game. To even claim, that you know how to play this game, you have to literally study, from actual books on how to play the game, not what different cards do. You have to learn an artificial, mutable language, that you then use to communicate with your partner, and out of this conversation you have to deduce the exact location of 39 cards and establish up front and with high precision, how the gameflow will look like. Then, if you're the declarer, you must precisely follow an usually singular path of 26 decision steps, that you tried to foresee during the auction. There is nowhere near this level of skill in 40k. As I wrote before, this is a simple game, which is then made to look difficult, by high level of encyclopedic knowledge (the bloat) required to play it against wide stream of different opponents.

How long does it take to try out all the different secondaries? How long does it take to try out the different relics? Why can't those two players buy more miniatures or proxy? Why can't players try to be more aggressive or defensive in each of the 9 missions? Where do the players get their encyclopedic knowledge from? Give us a matchup, terrain set-up and mission you know like the back of your hand and tell us how both sides are to deploy and play, likely ways each side is likely to mess up and how to take advantage of those mistakes and who is more likely to win if mistakes are made as per a usual noobish game or given game-theoretical optimal play from both sides that should be arrived at within a few games according to your hypothesis.

**Tyel**

nou wrote:
And it is funny, that you did include lists, but didn't include the actual mission nor deployment zones in your little riddle, that is meant to convince me, that 40k is not first and foremost list dependent Just compare your riddle to how chess riddles look like: you're presented with a board state and asked a question about solution of a very tiny, couple of moves long fragment of the game. If I know how chess pieces work, I can try to solve any chess riddle. But I can't solve your riddle, because I don't know neither IG nor DG codices - I don't have the encyclopedic knowledge. But because you misunderstood my post completely, I'll elaborate a bit - it wasn't about "there is nothing to think about during the game" or "lists play themselves", only that if you count individual decision points that happen before the match and their impact on the flow and outcome of the game, vs those, that happen during the match, most of them happens before. You only have a couple of dozen decision points during the actual 40k game - you literally only decide where to move, what to shoot, what to charge, when spend CPs etc, and since you start the game with about a dozen and a half units and the attrition is so steep, there are only so few decision points in the game. And most of those are not really decisions at all, target priority is usually obvious. Everything that happens before the game boils down to encyclopedic knowledge and mathhammer, but because you're building lists out of literal thousands of options (if you're looking at the entirety of 40k), there is way, way, way more decision making, than during the game. But when you take out this list building stage out of the game, like in friends&family situation, there is little left to solve.

I thought about declaring a mission - but you'd just have responded the same. I.E. "I don't know the difference between say data-scry salvage or the scouring, but I'm very confident they have little impact on in-game decision making".

Ultimately if you don't think there are that many decisions made in game then I'm not going to be able to persuade you. But I think you are obviously wrong.
Or, if you want to take this reductive approach down, it certainly applies to Chess. Just learn the best response to every move. Its easy - just read the encyclopedia. Or get an AI to play for you.

**Wayniac**

I think all most of the shows is that tournament play is a very small portion of the game but because there's so many sites and " content creators" doing videos and things about it It makes it seem like it's much larger than it really is. There is a definite disparity in resources for tournament and non-tournament play, highly in favor of tournament, so it's no wonder that they are thinking catering to that crowd is the correct approach

I'll see the same thing happen in world of Warcraft over the years. The loudest and most vocal minority are also the ones doing the hardest content and wanting everything to be super difficult So thank you feel better about themselves and because they have the loudest voice due to streams and videos and articles and all of that stuff they are the ones being unfairly listened to while the regular people are just kind of being ignored.

**Daedalus81**

Wayniac wrote:
I think all most of the shows is that tournament play is a very small portion of the game but because there's so many sites and " content creators" doing videos and things about it It makes it seem like it's much larger than it really is. There is a definite disparity in resources for tournament and non-tournament play, highly in favor of tournament, so it's no wonder that they are thinking catering to that crowd is the correct approach

I'll see the same thing happen in world of Warcraft over the years. The loudest and most vocal minority are also the ones doing the hardest content and wanting everything to be super difficult So thank you feel better about themselves and because they have the loudest voice due to streams and videos and articles and all of that stuff they are the ones being unfairly listened to while the regular people are just kind of being ignored.

How are you quantifying this disparity in resources?

I think this is perhaps a perception created through constant discussion of balance and mechanics on this forum, which has absolutely nothing to do with narrative or casual stuff. Like...there's nothing to discuss about things that are up to personal experience so we wind up talking competitive.

**Wayniac**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
I think all most of the shows is that tournament play is a very small portion of the game but because there's so many sites and " content creators" doing videos and things about it It makes it seem like it's much larger than it really is. There is a definite disparity in resources for tournament and non-tournament play, highly in favor of tournament, so it's no wonder that they are thinking catering to that crowd is the correct approach

I'll see the same thing happen in world of Warcraft over the years. The loudest and most vocal minority are also the ones doing the hardest content and wanting everything to be super difficult So thank you feel better about themselves and because they have the loudest voice due to streams and videos and articles and all of that stuff they are the ones being unfairly listened to while the regular people are just kind of being ignored.

How are you quantifying this disparity in resources?

I think this is perhaps a perception created through constant discussion of balance and mechanics on this forum, which has absolutely nothing to do with narrative or casual stuff. Like...there's nothing to discuss about things that are up to personal experience so we wind up talking competitive.

Most likely yes, but all of that contributes to the perception that tournament play is the majority of play, and should be the one catered to.

**Tyran**

The one thing GW caters above all else is sales.

If the tournament community says one thing but the sales department says another, then the tournament community becomes irrelevant.

I mean, e.g. tournament community has been very loud about wanting easy to access online rules and make heavy use of tools like Battlescribe or Wahapedia. And yet GW has done pretty much nothing except a joke of an app because sales.

**Daedalus81**

Wayniac wrote:
Most likely yes, but all of that contributes to the perception that tournament play is the majority of play, and should be the one catered to.

I mean for the record -- competitive gets a dataslate quarterly and then there's the irregular meta watch videos. Points are not on their own a competitive thing. Meanwhile narrative got 5 books for AoO and several crusade books.

Terrain made by GW is almost exclusively casual / narrative as it's totally unaffordable for tournaments and fortifications have been largely unusable.

**Dysartes**

Tournament play has also "acquired" Chapter Approved over time - in 8th it had a mix of content, but now it has been reduced to just being the latest tournament mission pack.

**Wayniac**

Dysartes wrote:
Tournament play has also "acquired" Chapter Approved over time - in 8th it had a mix of content, but now it has been reduced to just being the latest tournament mission pack.

That, I think, is the worst part. Not because tournament play doesn't NEED an established pack (IMHO they should do even more, like each mission should have a standardized terrain layout that you use), but because as usual it subsumed everything else.

**Daedalus81**

GW released a whole Maelstrom setup for 9th and like...barely anyone talked about it beyond the first week.

**Wayniac**

Daedalus81 wrote:
GW released a whole Maelstrom setup for 9th and like...barely anyone talked about it beyond the first week.

Can't say I remembered that, but I recall tournament players hate Maelstrom and things like it, don't they?

**Daedalus81**

Wayniac wrote:
Daedalus81 wrote:
GW released a whole Maelstrom setup for 9th and like...barely anyone talked about it beyond the first week.
Can't say I remembered that, but I recall tournament players hate Maelstrom and things like it, don't they?

Mostly when it becomes a system where you have to leap frog across the battlefield in untenable random outcomes. The one they did looked at least to try and prevent that and I remember 8th had some rules added to mitigate the randomness, but no one ever championed it.

There were also the Open War mission cards - completely geared towards casual play.

**Wayniac**

Personally I found Tempest of War to be amazing, way better than the GT missions because it encouraged a more well-rounded army, but wasn't total random crap

**Tyel**

I don't know if its a "tournament player" thing - but drawing objectives you can't achieve 2 turns in a row is deeply frustrating. Especially if by contrast your opponent is drawing a succession of "defend this objective right in your own deployment zone".

The changes in late 8th to mitigate the randomness (i.e. select your own deck of 18 cards, draw a hand of 5 each turn then select 3 to score etc) helped - but I think it fell between two stools. The players who liked the randomness didn't want this strange deck-building/selecting element. Meanwhile the people who didn't like the randomness were happy with regular 40k where they could just have none.

Ultimately I think GW does put lots of stuff out for narrative/fluff players. But they often don't like it. And as a result it kind of just gets ignored. (This is the comparison I'd make for WoW's single player/casual content, most of which just sucks.)

**VladimirHerzog**

Wayniac wrote:
Personally I found Tempest of War to be amazing, way better than the GT missions because it encouraged a more well-rounded army, but wasn't total random crap

same, before i dropped 40k in favor of AoS, Tempest is all we played at my LGS.

**Wayniac**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
Personally I found Tempest of War to be amazing, way better than the GT missions because it encouraged a more well-rounded army, but wasn't total random crap

same, before i dropped 40k in favor of AoS, Tempest is all we played at my LGS.

I really hope they do something like that for 10th. My local store is nothing but GT missions, sadly. if 10th has something like tempest, I plan to try and push that until I inevitably get told to feth off

**Voss**

Daedalus81 wrote:
GW released a whole Maelstrom setup for 9th and like...barely anyone talked about it beyond the first week.

Tabletop Tactics still regularly pushes it as the best way to play.
They even (gasp) record league and narrative games as well.

**PenitentJake**

Wayniac wrote:
There is a definite disparity in resources for tournament and non-tournament play, highly in favor of tournament, so it's no wonder that they are thinking catering to that crowd is the correct approach

If you're talking about youtube channels and blogs be third parties when you mention resources, then yes... Matched play (tournament) resources do outweigh Narrative (Crusade) resources.

However, if you're talking about GW produced books, there are more of those for Crusade than there are for Matched. I remind people about this all the time, but they never seem to remember. Crusade has had more than twice as many Mission Packs as Matched, and every book that isn't a Mission Pack has contained both Matched play and Crusade content.

Note: I didn't buy any of the Arks of Omen Books, so they may have leveled the playing field.

**vict0988**

Wayniac wrote:
Daedalus81 wrote:
GW released a whole Maelstrom setup for 9th and like...barely anyone talked about it beyond the first week.
Can't say I remembered that, but I recall tournament players hate Maelstrom and things like it, don't they?

No, not at all. You're so far off base. Maelstrom was the tournament format of Britbong land, the home country of GDubs. I think Maelstrom is effing terrible for tournament games but I also think it's great for casual games.

**Hecaton**

As long as we've got those casual players who are afraid to play in tournaments because they know they'll get washed, love stomping new players, and demand that their opponents play with suboptimal stuff so they can get free wins, tournament players will not be the biggest problem with 40k.

**Gadzilla666**

VladimirHerzog wrote:
Wayniac wrote:
Personally I found Tempest of War to be amazing, way better than the GT missions because it encouraged a more well-rounded army, but wasn't total random crap

same, before i dropped 40k in favor of AoS, Tempest is all we played at my LGS.

Again, "same". Before I dropped 9th edition 40k for HH, I absolutely loved Tempest of War. Such a breath of fresh air compared to the repetitive tournament missions.

**Karol**

Tyel 809603 11524577 wrote:Ultimately I think GW does put lots of stuff out for narrative/fluff players. But they often don't like it. And as a result it kind of just gets ignored. (This is the comparison I'd make for WoW's single player/casual content, most of which just sucks.)

There is also the thing that an "open" or narrative player can change stuff how ever they want. Someone who plays in a 2000pts last sesonal rules pack matched played area, has a lot less space to adjust the rules etc Something has to be community wide not accepted to make it in to the matched play enviroment, while being technicaly against GW proposed rules sets. In a narrative game problems like, my knights can be shot through ruines and forests, but can't shot back, practicaly don't exist. In matched play they very much do, and each edition has its bucket of "problems" like that.

I can imagine, after seeing some HH, that an IF narrative player can have great time, as long as he is let to build intercessor breachers or other IF specific units that GW didn't give rules to, because there are no models for them. In matched play the IF that exist have to be probably more then a bit like me.

**Daedalus81**

Ok so what do people think of this?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/28/gambits-and-missions-heres-how-you-win-games-of-new40k/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=warhammer-40,000&utm_content=gambits28042023&fbclid=IwAR2EN6wOa64KcEKkvSQ94u8o82vMj6m28cjkABr57vRRiUsDyKvCi1qTvdk

**VladimirHerzog**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Ok so what do people think of this?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/28/gambits-and-missions-heres-how-you-win-games-of-new40k/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=warhammer-40,000&utm_content=gambits28042023&fbclid=IwAR2EN6wOa64KcEKkvSQ94u8o82vMj6m28cjkABr57vRRiUsDyKvCi1qTvdk

asymetric objectives is cool, seems like secondaries as we know them are gone (good IMO). Eager to see in-detail how its gonna work

**nou**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Ok so what do people think of this?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/28/gambits-and-missions-heres-how-you-win-games-of-new40k/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=warhammer-40,000&utm_content=gambits28042023&fbclid=IwAR2EN6wOa64KcEKkvSQ94u8o82vMj6m28cjkABr57vRRiUsDyKvCi1qTvdk

GW has finally recognized the problem, that has haunted this game since forever - 3rd turn rapid game tree trim, which made playing out the second half of great many games unnecessary.

**Daedalus81**

VladimirHerzog wrote:

asymetric objectives is cool, seems like secondaries as we know them are gone (good IMO). Eager to see in-detail how its gonna work

Well, they're still there, but it lets the tournament player play their fixed objective and a more casual player to play something more dynamic. Does that help with the pickup dynamic?

Also it looks like being attacker / defender will have an actual meaning in games.

**ccs**

Daedalus81 wrote:
Ok so what do people think of this?

https://www.warhammer-community.com/2023/04/28/gambits-and-missions-heres-how-you-win-games-of-new40k/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=warhammer-40,000&utm_content=gambits28042023&fbclid=IwAR2EN6wOa64KcEKkvSQ94u8o82vMj6m28cjkABr57vRRiUsDyKvCi1qTvdk

Beats the hell out of the standard Hold 1/Hold 2/Hold More format.