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Apple fox wrote: I think house rules in 40K kinda suck since they almost always are made to fix issues that the game shouldn’t have.
When we play Mordheim, our house rules are almost entirely fun addition to the game.
Things like weather, new characters and boats.
Warmachine is effectively just table set up, it handles terrain super well. And narrative games super fun there as well.
MCP I been having a blast, all narrative, all fun! No house rules needed.
Battletech, is similar to Mordheim. Anything we added on is to expand the game, as the rules itself are fairly clean.
40k honestly I rarely see house rules that expand the game, often it’s to rework issues the base game has. And narrative mostly very basic without going into rewrites.
It’s basically rewarded for the bare minimum of rules to push its own narrative.
Which actually makes sense if you follow GW forge the narrative from years ago, they make the game up to support whatever they trying to sell.
Often to its own narrative detriment.
House rules we make tend to enhance the game not fix issues. We tend to house rule mission rules and objectives, home brew units and characters. Not actual game rules. If something spoils the game we tend to ignore it, this was more of an issue in the last two editions where there were so many layers of rules we took a lot of them as optional and agreed before had if we were using x or y. We don’t really change rules to work better.
VladimirHerzog wrote: I don't think its blaming the players when people suggest alternate ways to play or even houserules?
I don't have any problems with house rules.
I do have a problem when people go "This thing you think is a problem is fine because our group just house rules it!". That doesn't make the problem not a problem, and it's not a real way of dealing with a problem. It's just sticking your head in the sand.
This was all across the points thread, and it's all across here.
I agree that GW adopting the competitive meta angle is likely a bad thing overall, they're not in a position organisationally to follow up on their words and the product doesn't endorse it. The comparisons to magic always intrigue me because the time investment in 40k is notably greater for a lot of people tog et up and running than it is for magic, Magic can feasibly rectify their situation and reprint cards then job done. 40k it's harder to fix someone's expensive collection of personally painted minis, which is why the community aspect of managing the situation tends to arise more I think.
Ultimately if GW would stop convincing themselves and marketing as a balanced competitive experience then it'd take some of the pressure off their FUBAR's and they could bumble through a little easier as a causal game.
H.B.M.C. wrote: Everything can damage everything. That's the way the stupid To Wound chart works, and has done for several editions.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Sure, but winning doesn't have to be the main reason to play either.
And I never said it did, only that comments like "I don't play to win!" are inherently dishonest, because no one plays to lose and no one plays to draw.
Personally I hate what competitive play has done to 40k over the past edition, and I routinely refer to "metawatch" articles as the best comedic articles GW ever posts. 9th Edition - Tournament Edition 40k - saw too much a shift towards making everything tournament based, and the "balance" dataslates were just GW lurching to put out one fire after another in the most hamfisted knee-jerking ways imaginable (their attempt at "fixing" aircraft still boils my blood).
But I don't hate tournaments or competitive play, only that GW has learnt all the wrong lessons from it. Caulyn put it perfectly above, so I'll just quote him:
"When something is broken in Magic, people blame WotC. When something is broken in 40K people are perfectly fine blaming players instead of GW."
If 40k isn't working, blaming the players is stupid. They didn't write the game. They're not the ones who fail and fail again to iterate and learn from mistakes. They're not the ones still attempting to balance (read: punish) units for being powerful 2 editions ago. They're not the ones who don't see how raising the prices on all Indirect units across the board can impact those same units with also have non-indirect abilities. They're not the ones for what must be the third edition in a row wrote "Reduce the damage taken by 1" and somehow still forgot to put "to a minimum of 1" in there, so had to FAQ/designer notes it once again. And many more examples beyond that...
Why would anyone blame the players for playing the game GW wrote the way GW wrote it?
About playing to win, happy to agree to disagree (again)but you are now calling a bunch of people in this thread dishonest, there’s no need.
As for what competitive play did for 40K in 9th I agree in principle that it wasn’t good for the game as a whole but it’s impact on the “casual” garage hammer groups was minimal really but I have said for a long time all this reactionary responses to powerful units aren’t helpful.
VladimirHerzog wrote: I don't think its blaming the players when people suggest alternate ways to play or even houserules?
I don't have any problems with house rules.
I do have a problem when people go "This thing you think is a problem is fine because our group just house rules it!". That doesn't make the problem not a problem, and it's not a real way of dealing with a problem. It's just sticking your head in the sand.
This was all across the points thread, and it's all across here.
I agree that GW adopting the competitive meta angle is likely a bad thing overall, they're not in a position organisationally to follow up on their words and the product doesn't endorse it. The comparisons to magic always intrigue me because the time investment in 40k is notably greater for a lot of people tog et up and running than it is for magic, Magic can feasibly rectify their situation and reprint cards then job done. 40k it's harder to fix someone's expensive collection of personally painted minis, which is why the community aspect of managing the situation tends to arise more I think.
Ultimately if GW would stop convincing themselves and marketing as a balanced competitive experience then it'd take some of the pressure off their FUBAR's and they could bumble through a little easier as a causal game.
It really does feel like a lovely passable casual game that can be open ended enough to be a sandbox for your dudes but dressed up as an ultra competitive game.
I said a few editions ago when people were arguing for making the game structured as a competitive game that they should have two rule sets, one tight streamlined set for match play and one for narrative play. The problem at the minute is the game is designed for the wide end of the “hobby trumpet” but they keep pushing the high end competitive side which is a way further down. They get the balance so right with their paint line, easy and accessible to the masses and easy to understand but they don’t try and cater for the hardcore painter side of things who want wet palettes and paints with pigment names and opacity details on the bottles etc.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/08/17 15:48:05
Apple fox wrote: I think house rules in 40K kinda suck since they almost always are made to fix issues that the game shouldn’t have.
When we play Mordheim, our house rules are almost entirely fun addition to the game.
Things like weather, new characters and boats.
Warmachine is effectively just table set up, it handles terrain super well. And narrative games super fun there as well.
MCP I been having a blast, all narrative, all fun! No house rules needed.
Battletech, is similar to Mordheim. Anything we added on is to expand the game, as the rules itself are fairly clean.
40k honestly I rarely see house rules that expand the game, often it’s to rework issues the base game has. And narrative mostly very basic without going into rewrites.
It’s basically rewarded for the bare minimum of rules to push its own narrative.
Which actually makes sense if you follow GW forge the narrative from years ago, they make the game up to support whatever they trying to sell.
Often to its own narrative detriment.
House rules we make tend to enhance the game not fix issues. We tend to house rule mission rules and objectives, home brew units and characters. Not actual game rules. If something spoils the game we tend to ignore it, this was more of an issue in the last two editions where there were so many layers of rules we took a lot of them as optional and agreed before had if we were using x or y. We don’t really change rules to work better.
Just as a point, I don’t mean to say you cannot house rule as you do. Or anything like you cannot, but that so many people fall back onto 40K being a good narrative game when most of what plagues the game as issues are bad for casual and narrative experience.
There is a post right now on competitive reddit about terrain, since the game itself encourages the embarrassment that is 40K terrain setups. Competitive players are not against narrative and I think when the game encourages it, most players get a lot more out of being able to play though a narrative even at the most competitive.
The games I mention I think all provide that, when 40K often trips over itself to get there.
The last 4 editions of the game I think have all had issues with this, and this one they try but bare minimum effort to get there.
It’s still got issues all over.
As mention is things like anything can hurt anything, often I think it’s more given GW an excuse to not put in balance effort too support a table top narrative, and as a way to give a out for bad design in the gameplay.
For example, units in the 40k roster that are KT capable have gestalt experience profiles, meaning that every time they earn XP, it applies to both a 40k Crusade profile and a KT Spec Ops profile. They only ever use one at a time based on the game that they are playing, but they're always ready to be dropped into either game as needed.
We've figured out how to give each planet the details it needs to be wooed by the Tau, insurrected by the GSC or devoured by the nids.
The 9th ed game didn't need houserules to meet our needs, but 10th is looking kinda flat. We haven't decided yet whether we're buying in or not. I did buy the Tyrannic War book, but that wasn't enough to make a decision- I'll have to see a dex first.
Apple fox wrote: I think house rules in 40K kinda suck since they almost always are made to fix issues that the game shouldn’t have.
When we play Mordheim, our house rules are almost entirely fun addition to the game.
Things like weather, new characters and boats.
Warmachine is effectively just table set up, it handles terrain super well. And narrative games super fun there as well.
MCP I been having a blast, all narrative, all fun! No house rules needed.
Battletech, is similar to Mordheim. Anything we added on is to expand the game, as the rules itself are fairly clean.
40k honestly I rarely see house rules that expand the game, often it’s to rework issues the base game has. And narrative mostly very basic without going into rewrites.
It’s basically rewarded for the bare minimum of rules to push its own narrative.
Which actually makes sense if you follow GW forge the narrative from years ago, they make the game up to support whatever they trying to sell.
Often to its own narrative detriment.
House rules we make tend to enhance the game not fix issues. We tend to house rule mission rules and objectives, home brew units and characters. Not actual game rules. If something spoils the game we tend to ignore it, this was more of an issue in the last two editions where there were so many layers of rules we took a lot of them as optional and agreed before had if we were using x or y. We don’t really change rules to work better.
Just as a point, I don’t mean to say you cannot house rule as you do. Or anything like you cannot, but that so many people fall back onto 40K being a good narrative game when most of what plagues the game as issues are bad for casual and narrative experience.
There is a post right now on competitive reddit about terrain, since the game itself encourages the embarrassment that is 40K terrain setups. Competitive players are not against narrative and I think when the game encourages it, most players get a lot more out of being able to play though a narrative even at the most competitive.
The games I mention I think all provide that, when 40K often trips over itself to get there.
The last 4 editions of the game I think have all had issues with this, and this one they try but bare minimum effort to get there.
It’s still got issues all over.
As mention is things like anything can hurt anything, often I think it’s more given GW an excuse to not put in balance effort too support a table top narrative, and as a way to give a out for bad design in the gameplay.
I didn’t say it was a “good” narrative game. The game of 40K is one part of the whole hobby to me, the game with its faults is made better and playable by the back ground, models and my history with it. I’m really enjoying 10th so far and the index’s are great for us as it feels like a framework we can build our narrative on. It feels very bloat free right now, not sure what we will do when codexs come out and each bring more rules.
The big problem with the push for balance is the way GW does it, all restrictions and points increases.
Competitive 40k is gw's marketing department idea to exploit guillible ones to get their money as easily as possible.
40k is as competitive as emperor's clotres were stellar in the famous story.
You can make the argument it's a *bad* competitive game. But it's a competitive game. Dungeons and Dragons is a narrative game - there's no winners or losers, it's not competitive, etc.
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PenitentJake wrote: Campaign and progressive play really blur the simple win/loss dichotomy.
No, because if you play, say, 9e release Tyranids, the only narrative you're going to be able to tell is how Tyranids ate everybody. The end.
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Maréchal des Logis Walter wrote: No offense intended to those people who get heated on non competitive players, but I think you simply don't understand because it is not your taste and no matter how hard we will try, you will not. Like trying to explain why you should like X food and you simply don't. There's no argument to be made on tastes. One way or the other: I will don't understand why you'd keep trying competitively playing 40k, but you are just as right if you do and what matters is that it is funny to you. I think that apart from a few loud voices this is the wider consensus.
However keep in mind we do play to win (=achieve our set objective), otherwise nothing would ever go forward, and also may experience the bad state of balance (friend's army struggling so bad you need to up it a bit to let him have fun, etc...). We simply look at the results otherwise and find enjoyment elsewhere.
It's mostly the idea that is pushed around that the reason that competitive players are not having fun isn't bad balance, it's because they're evil competitive players. I've seen it again and again on this forum. And it's flat-out wrong - even rats play-wrestle, and stop doing it if the outcome isn't fair enough. Balance is important.
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CaulynDarr wrote: Someone earlier had mentioned managing power level in Magic EDH comparably to 40k. That's apt. EDH is a casual format where the rules committee is a very light touch on balance. Your player group is expected to Rule 0 things and self mange. This is great with established playgroups, but problematic for pickup games where people have different ideas about acceptable power level. This creates the same social dynamic 40k sometimes faces where people can take advantage and be TFGs. Though, competitive EDH exists, and it's a whole 'nother game. There you're expected to be running a $5000 dollar deck with all the OP fast mana cards to go infinite on turn 2. It would be rude to play CEDH and not come prepared to play at that level.
Though this brings up a pretty interesting difference between MTG and 40K. When something is broken in Magic, people blame WotC. When something is broken in 40K people are perfectly fine blaming players instead of GW. Now if you club a beginner with a tournament meta list, yeah that's the player being a jerk. But playing the codex, units, and rules as written by GW and incidentally stomping on your equally experienced opponent because GW printed a broken game? That's GWs fault for shipping a broken game.
It's also worth noting that historically EDH has had people calling the shots who straight up didn't understand balance (banning Monkey Cage etc).
And you've cottoned on to something very crucial here - that there's a segment of the 40k playerbase that blames other players for GW's mistakes. It's very dishonest and should be stamped out, it's a toxic part of the culture.
VladimirHerzog wrote: Sure, but winning doesn't have to be the main reason to play either.
And I never said it did, only that comments like "I don't play to win!" are inherently dishonest, because no one plays to lose and no one plays to draw.
This isn't quite correct. In a team play environment you can certainly be playing to draw, and in situations where you know you have no chance to win you can play to draw.
You can also be playing to lose - not trying to lose or actively sabotaging yourself - but when your friend who is really into the game and plays Custodes asks for a game, and you play your DG army, you are playing the game knowing you are going to lose. You go into that game for social reasons, or to keep your friend happy, but you know you will lose. So you are no longer playing to win.
Nope.
While wether I win/lose isn't actually important to me, I'm never playing to lose. I will always try my best to win with whatever I've brought to the table. And there isn't a force out there that I'm not confident that I've got a shot at beating (especially if I know what I'll face).
Yeah there's a difference between playing a match where you are on the losing side and playing to lose.
In one case you're accepting that you're not going to win, but you are still playing properly. In the other you are engineering a loss by playing poorly.
I know there are justifications and arguments for option B in certain situations, but often as not it comes down a lot to personal attitude and situation.
In option A it can often be a case of adjusting your view to wins. Eg last game I played I realised around the mid game that I'd made some poor choices and wasn't going to win the match overall. However I adjusted my focus to taking out a key enemy unit that had caused me great harm. So I adapted my tactics to go for that unit above other choices. I still lost the match, but I killed that unit!
And that's just an example of how sometimes its not a black and white "win lose overall" but a case of adjusting your approach through the game.
Do you go for that pure win even up to the last second where its hopeless; do you go for secondary objectives or give yourself game themed objectives to aim for that you can potentially achieve even if all else is lost.
Hecaton wrote: You can make the argument it's a *bad* competitive game. But it's a competitive game. Dungeons and Dragons is a narrative game - there's no winners or losers, it's not competitive, etc.
You're correct in principle but instead of the ambiguous term "competitive" I'd go with adversarial. D&D is a cooperative game with non-zero-sum outcomes, 40k is an adversarial game with zero-sum outcomes. Even if 40k isn't played in a competitive context it is still a zero-sum game where the goal is to defeat your opponent.
Ashitaka wrote: This isn't quite correct. In a team play environment you can certainly be playing to draw, and in situations where you know you have no chance to win you can play to draw.
That's forcing a draw based on the situation, to ensure that you do not lose. You don't ever start a game going "Man! I sure hope I draw today!".
Ashitaka wrote: You can also be playing to lose - not trying to lose or actively sabotaging yourself - but when your friend who is really into the game and plays Custodes asks for a game, and you play your DG army, you are playing the game knowing you are going to lose. You go into that game for social reasons, or to keep your friend happy, but you know you will lose. So you are no longer playing to win.
That sounds a lot like throwing a game to keep someone happy, which isn't really playing the game as intended either.
My points stand.
Andykp wrote: About playing to win, happy to agree to disagree (again)but you are now calling a bunch of people in this thread dishonest, there’s no need.
Dishonest or bad faith. Take your pick.
The method of play you described seems like cooperative storytelling with random elements. It didn't strike me as playing 40k the way 40k is intended. So, sure, if I understood what you wrote, you aren't playing to win, but you also really aren't "playing" either. You're just kind of doing your own thing - which is totally fine, as previously established - but it's not the game, so making judgement calls for the game at large based upon the version that you play is, at worst, dishonest.
Andykp wrote: As for what competitive play did for 40K in 9th I agree in principle that it wasn’t good for the game as a whole but it’s impact on the “casual” garage hammer groups was minimal really but I have said for a long time all this reactionary responses to powerful units aren’t helpful.
And I don't think that's true at all, as most people play by the rules that GW put out. If they put out new points, you play with them. Put out a new Codex, you play with it. It might not have impacted you and the version of 40k you and your friends are playing, but if impacted most players.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/08/17 23:49:44
PenitentJake wrote: Campaign and progressive play really blur the simple win/loss dichotomy.
No, because if you play, say, 9e release Tyranids, the only narrative you're going to be able to tell is how Tyranids ate everybody. The end.
It's certainly true to say that Tyranid bespoke content is more single minded in focus than the bespoke content for other factions- I think 3/5 agendas accelerate the accumulation of Biomass and Crushed Resistance. But once again, that in itself provides another way to achieve the Long-Term Faction goal rather than winning or losing games, which is exactly what I meant by breaking the win/loss dichotomy.
It's worth mentioning that the Consumption of a planet is only the last of three stages. Tyranids must first Invade and then subject a world to Predation before its consumption can begin. Those phases affect the composition of the army, as well as providing advantages and disadvantages unique advantages and disadvantages, which does affect the story. Finally, Crusade interacts with Adaptive Physiology and can also mutate organisms by swapping their Synaptic Imperatives via Neuro-Hybridization, so there is an evolutionary theme at work as well, though I'll admit it's a bit weak compared to what's available to other factions.
And remember that there's more than one planet to be devoured per system, and there's always another system. Varieties in planet types change the portion of the story devoted to Invasion/ Predation/ Consumption. Again, smaller variation than you're getting with a lot of other factions, but it does add to the story. And of course, as with all factions, the story of a campaign is also in part the story of what enemies do.
It's also worth mentioning that 9th provided the capacity for GSC/ Tyranid cross-overs. We never got far enough in the campaign, but our plan had been to allow patriarch, purestrain, accolyte, metamorph, abominant and aberrant units can continue to operate in concert with Tyranid forces while all other GSC units either a) flee for another in-system planet or submit to the Hive Fleet to be recycled for more suitable units.
You're correct in principle but instead of the ambiguous term "competitive" I'd go with adversarial. D&D is a cooperative game with non-zero-sum outcomes, 40k is an adversarial game with zero-sum outcomes.
"Competitive" is not an an ambiguous term. The baseline definition of a competitive game is one where two players compete, with one losing and one winning. That's literally 40k. There's no argument to be made here; that's what 40k is at its book definition level. Trying to re-brand competitive as "Adversarial" is splitting hairs to the Nth degree.
Can 40k be more than that? Absolutely. But that's once more veering into the weeds about those who don't really play 40k.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/08/18 00:40:21
morganfreeman wrote: "Competitive" is not an an ambiguous term. The baseline definition of a competitive game is one where two players compete, with one losing and one winning. That's literally 40k. There's no argument to be made here; that's what 40k is at its core. Trying to re-brand competitive as "Adversarial" is splitting hairs to the Nth degree.
It's absolutely ambiguous. "Competitive" can mean a zero-sum game as you describe, or it can refer to organized tournament play (and its associated practice games, etc). Cite dictionary definitions all you like, there are clearly two different uses of the word in normal conversation about 40k and everyone benefits if we use clearer terms.
morganfreeman wrote: "Competitive" is not an an ambiguous term. The baseline definition of a competitive game is one where two players compete, with one losing and one winning. That's literally 40k. There's no argument to be made here; that's what 40k is at its core. Trying to re-brand competitive as "Adversarial" is splitting hairs to the Nth degree.
It's absolutely ambiguous. "Competitive" can mean a zero-sum game as you describe, or it can refer to organized tournament play (and its associated practice games, etc). Cite dictionary definitions all you like, there are clearly two different uses of the word in normal conversation about 40k and everyone benefits if we use clearer terms.
You're not applying the word to the same thing. 40k is a competitive game, someone loses and someone wins or they (rarely) draw. Tournaments are not 40k; you can hold them for 40k, but tournaments are not what 40k is. Ergo 40k is a competitive game (a winner and a loser) where as 40k tournaments have a wider range (best winner, second best, ect).
Sure, the word Competitive has varied meanings but so does the word Running, and what you are attaching them to solves the definitional issue for the same reason I've never had to foot-race my refrigerator for dinner.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/08/18 00:50:12
morganfreeman wrote: You're not applying the word to the same thing. 40k is a competitive game, someone loses and someone wins or they (rarely) draw. Tournaments are not 40k; you can hold them for 40k, but tournaments are not what 40k is. Ergo 40k is a competitive game (a winner and a loser) where as 40k tournaments have a wider range (best winner, second best, ect).
Sure, the word Competitive has varied meanings but so does the word Running, and what you are attaching them to solves the definitional issue for the same reason I've never had to foot-race my refrigerator for dinner.
Like I said, you can cite dictionary definitions all you like but that doesn't change the fact that in conversation about 40k there is ambiguity between "zero-sum scoring" and "tournaments" and there are frequently arguments where someone responds to a post thinking it was using one meaning but it really intended the other one. Using "adversarial" to describe head to head games with zero-sum scoring eliminates the confusion and is still an accurate description of the game concept.
It's certainly true to say that Tyranid bespoke content is more single minded in focus than the bespoke content for other factions- I think 3/5 agendas accelerate the accumulation of Biomass and Crushed Resistance. But once again, that in itself provides another way to achieve the Long-Term Faction goal rather than winning or losing games, which is exactly what I meant by breaking the win/loss dichotomy.
It's worth mentioning that the Consumption of a planet is only the last of three stages. Tyranids must first Invade and then subject a world to Predation before its consumption can begin. Those phases affect the composition of the army, as well as providing advantages and disadvantages unique advantages and disadvantages, which does affect the story. Finally, Crusade interacts with Adaptive Physiology and can also mutate organisms by swapping their Synaptic Imperatives via Neuro-Hybridization, so there is an evolutionary theme at work as well, though I'll admit it's a bit weak compared to what's available to other factions.
And remember that there's more than one planet to be devoured per system, and there's always another system. Varieties in planet types change the portion of the story devoted to Invasion/ Predation/ Consumption. Again, smaller variation than you're getting with a lot of other factions, but it does add to the story. And of course, as with all factions, the story of a campaign is also in part the story of what enemies do.
It's also worth mentioning that 9th provided the capacity for GSC/ Tyranid cross-overs. We never got far enough in the campaign, but our plan had been to allow patriarch, purestrain, accolyte, metamorph, abominant and aberrant units can continue to operate in concert with Tyranid forces while all other GSC units either a) flee for another in-system planet or submit to the Hive Fleet to be recycled for more suitable units.
You're misunderstanding me. I'm pointing out that release 9e Tyranids were ridiculously overpowered, to the point that the only story you could tell with them in 40k was them beating everyone else.
Ashitaka wrote: This isn't quite correct. In a team play environment you can certainly be playing to draw, and in situations where you know you have no chance to win you can play to draw.
That's forcing a draw based on the situation, to ensure that you do not lose. You don't ever start a game going "Man! I sure hope I draw today!".
Ashitaka wrote: You can also be playing to lose - not trying to lose or actively sabotaging yourself - but when your friend who is really into the game and plays Custodes asks for a game, and you play your DG army, you are playing the game knowing you are going to lose. You go into that game for social reasons, or to keep your friend happy, but you know you will lose. So you are no longer playing to win.
That sounds a lot like throwing a game to keep someone happy, which isn't really playing the game as intended either.
My points stand.
Andykp wrote: About playing to win, happy to agree to disagree (again)but you are now calling a bunch of people in this thread dishonest, there’s no need.
Dishonest or bad faith. Take your pick.
The method of play you described seems like cooperative storytelling with random elements. It didn't strike me as playing 40k the way 40k is intended. So, sure, if I understood what you wrote, you aren't playing to win, but you also really aren't "playing" either. You're just kind of doing your own thing - which is totally fine, as previously established - but it's not the game, so making judgement calls for the game at large based upon the version that you play is, at worst, dishonest.
Andykp wrote: As for what competitive play did for 40K in 9th I agree in principle that it wasn’t good for the game as a whole but it’s impact on the “casual” garage hammer groups was minimal really but I have said for a long time all this reactionary responses to powerful units aren’t helpful.
And I don't think that's true at all, as most people play by the rules that GW put out. If they put out new points, you play with them. Put out a new Codex, you play with it. It might not have impacted you and the version of 40k you and your friends are playing, but if impacted most players.
Fine mate think what you like, call me a liar or what ever you want.
It’s really hard having a civil discussion on here, very disappointing.
VladimirHerzog wrote: I don't think its blaming the players when people suggest alternate ways to play or even houserules?
I don't have any problems with house rules.
I do have a problem when people go "This thing you think is a problem is fine because our group just house rules it!". That doesn't make the problem not a problem, and it's not a real way of dealing with a problem. It's just sticking your head in the sand.
This was all across the points thread, and it's all across here.
I agree that GW adopting the competitive meta angle is likely a bad thing overall, they're not in a position organisationally to follow up on their words and the product doesn't endorse it. The comparisons to magic always intrigue me because the time investment in 40k is notably greater for a lot of people tog et up and running than it is for magic, Magic can feasibly rectify their situation and reprint cards then job done. 40k it's harder to fix someone's expensive collection of personally painted minis, which is why the community aspect of managing the situation tends to arise more I think.
Ultimately if GW would stop convincing themselves and marketing as a balanced competitive experience then it'd take some of the pressure off their FUBAR's and they could bumble through a little easier as a causal game.
Magic doesn't do a lot of card bans these days; mostly because they have set rotation. WotC understands their game and how it's played much better than GW understands 40K.
You can't apply many of the things that WotC does to miniature game(set rotation being a big one), but there are things they do that GW could. Like train official judges and help develop better etiquette for high level play. Get to top tables in a Magic tournament, even a small pre-release, and you will see people play the game in clear and deliberate ways. There are established ways to play Magic that leaves less room for drama and TFG behavior. Like imagine if official GW judges had official tournament guidelines for handling bumped models or calling out shady dice rolling. And it's not a stigmatized thing if a few dice bounce behind some terrain cause there's a standard way GW Judges would rule on it, so there's a standard way the players would deal with it without calling a judge.
This is where GW and the competitive 40K community runs before they can walk. Top players are selling coaching and private discord server access, and pushing GW to fix their broken game with bland terrain set-ups and overcomplicated scenario design--which doesn't really fix the core problems, just moves the goal post around and maybe makes it a bit harder to see the optimal strategy at first.
All the while a player goes 5-0 with Tau by cheating through a whole major GT. All because the game is short on qualified judges and good tournament etiquette.
Of course that's even getting ahead of ourselves. I'd settle for a game where the top army doesn't just dumpster the bottom army 9 times out of 10.
Andykp wrote: Fine mate think what you like, call me a liar or what ever you want.
It’s really hard having a civil discussion on here, very disappointing.
Ignore any opportunity to explain your position or show why I might be wrong. Just throw a tantrum instead and play the victim rather than answering anything I said. And then claim you're the one being civil as you grasp some nonexistent moral high ground. Awesome stuff!
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2023/08/18 17:24:11
catbarf wrote: The objective of the game is to beat your opponent, and the listbuilding stage is where you devise the strategy that will accomplish that goal. It's hardly WAAC to pick units and synergies that will contribute towards winning the game.
"But I don't play to win!"
The amount of people I've heard repeat that line over the past decade makes me really wonder.
And it never made any sense to me in the first place. I mean, no one plays to lose, and no one plays to draw (forcing a draw on the other hand), so of course everyone plays to win.
That’s really not true, now to make something clear before I start to avoid any confusion here, I am not a ”casual” player I have invest thousands of pounds and untold hours into this hobby over 30+ years, t takes up huge amounts of my time and effort. But I am what I like to call a narrative player. It is ALL about the story.
So when I was playing my game yesterday my mate and I were both playing to achieve the objectives the narrative had set out but were both playing them in ways appropriate to our armies and in a fun way for each other “Winning” was not the object of the game but telling the story was.
In the end he “won” the game on VPs but the narrative outcome was much more interesting, he had achieved his goals but my army had had a very crucial narrative shift with an old stalwart warboss having been shown up by a newcomer and their being a shift in power in my ORKS.
During and after the battle we have discussions about what is happening narratively, what the story is. This takes as long as the battle most the time. We also discuss how things went tactically, how we played and what mistakes we made etc (mostly about learning the new edition at the minute).
Now this is very nuanced and different from how you would play in a pick up game for sure and it isn’t how everyone plays but we have known each other for a long time and been playing for a long time so we can play this RP style of game. Neither of us know the rules inside out and there’s an awful lot of going back to do things we forgot or suddenly remembering a rule the army or unit has that would have helped but two turns after the event. We would get battered by anyone who knows the rules well and is setting out purely to win the game so wouldn’t let us go back or re roll a shooting with the lethal hits we just remembered we had. But that is not how we do it.
So we don’t play to win. Our aims when we play are in this order of priority; BOTH have a fun experience, use our collections (as in we will pick units we won’t to use for lots of reasons, such as they are a new model, just painted or they are just cool), add to our narrative in universe. We don’t pull gotcha moments on each other, we discuss army composition while making our lists together so we can make our lists fit each others, if either of us are bringing something potentially powerful we let the other know so we can be prepared and not have it dominate the game in a boring way and we discuss any tricks or special abilities our units have.
There are others like me out there too, we don’t all play to win. It’s a big big hobby with lots of different motivations for playing a game.
Fully explained here already. But you gave stated twice since that I am lying, not sure why. And twice I have said we should just agree to disagree. So not going to explain myself again just to be called a liar again.
Not playing a victim card just very hard to have a conversation if one half the conversation is “no, you’re lying”. And pointless. Moving on….
VladimirHerzog wrote: I don't think its blaming the players when people suggest alternate ways to play or even houserules?
I don't have any problems with house rules.
I do have a problem when people go "This thing you think is a problem is fine because our group just house rules it!". That doesn't make the problem not a problem, and it's not a real way of dealing with a problem. It's just sticking your head in the sand.
This was all across the points thread, and it's all across here.
I agree that GW adopting the competitive meta angle is likely a bad thing overall, they're not in a position organisationally to follow up on their words and the product doesn't endorse it. The comparisons to magic always intrigue me because the time investment in 40k is notably greater for a lot of people tog et up and running than it is for magic, Magic can feasibly rectify their situation and reprint cards then job done. 40k it's harder to fix someone's expensive collection of personally painted minis, which is why the community aspect of managing the situation tends to arise more I think.
Ultimately if GW would stop convincing themselves and marketing as a balanced competitive experience then it'd take some of the pressure off their FUBAR's and they could bumble through a little easier as a causal game.
Magic doesn't do a lot of card bans these days; mostly because they have set rotation. WotC understands their game and how it's played much better than GW understands 40K.
You can't apply many of the things that WotC does to miniature game(set rotation being a big one), but there are things they do that GW could. Like train official judges and help develop better etiquette for high level play. Get to top tables in a Magic tournament, even a small pre-release, and you will see people play the game in clear and deliberate ways. There are established ways to play Magic that leaves less room for drama and TFG behavior. Like imagine if official GW judges had official tournament guidelines for handling bumped models or calling out shady dice rolling. And it's not a stigmatized thing if a few dice bounce behind some terrain cause there's a standard way GW Judges would rule on it, so there's a standard way the players would deal with it without calling a judge.
This is where GW and the competitive 40K community runs before they can walk. Top players are selling coaching and private discord server access, and pushing GW to fix their broken game with bland terrain set-ups and overcomplicated scenario design--which doesn't really fix the core problems, just moves the goal post around and maybe makes it a bit harder to see the optimal strategy at first.
All the while a player goes 5-0 with Tau by cheating through a whole major GT. All because the game is short on qualified judges and good tournament etiquette.
Of course that's even getting ahead of ourselves. I'd settle for a game where the top army doesn't just dumpster the bottom army 9 times out of 10.
Given all this is true, and I’m sure it is, this leads to my biggest question about competitive 40K. Why is it so popular as a competitive game? Everyone agrees the game is either badly imbalanced or all the broken and anywhere in between. Competitive army lists have little to do with the fluff or lore. Given that it’s that broken what draws people to play 40K this way? Is it just popular because it’s so popular already and easy to get games and fill tournaments just because it’s 40K, THE game??
Or is it the same that draws me to the game, the fluff, the models the history? Just drawing you to a different aspect of the hobby? Genuine question and one that never gets really answered as most these discussions are big arguments by this point but we’ve had some decent communication in this one for the most part.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2023/08/18 22:05:14
So to clarify, you won't go to the flgs and play randoms in case they're not serious enough for you?
Very rarely. I typically get on the Facebook group for my FLGS and say "hey guys, looking to practice some games for the US Open. If anyone has a 2k list and wants a tournament practice game this weekend, lmk"
I'm not going to pack up all my stuff, drive over there, and hope to get a game. I usually don't play much unless I'm playing against my wife on the kitchen table or pre arranged tournament practice games with a specific mission pack and terrain layout in mind.
Andykp wrote: Why is it so popular as a competitive game?
Because for many people a bad competitive game is better than no competitive game at all and no other miniatures game comes close to what 40k offers for competitive play.
Competitive 40k is gw's marketing department idea to exploit guillible ones to get their money as easily as possible.
40k is as competitive as emperor's clotres were stellar in the famous story.
Who ties your shoes in the morning, or are they velcro? 99% of games fall into 2 categories, competitive or cooperative. Competitive = the game has a winner and loser. Cooperative = the players are playing together to defeat an enemy, controlled by another player or the game itself. I'll let you decide which category 40k falls into. Just because it isn't perfectly balanced like chess doesn't magically make it a cooperative game rather than a competitive one. How competitive you want to be is up to you, but the game, by definition, is. Oh also the tournaments around the world, that are reported on by the company making the game, with lengthy videos titled "Metawatch" (all about the COMPETITIVE meta) would also lead you to the conclusion that the game was intended to be a competitive game. You can stick your fingers in your ears and scream "LA LA LA LA", and call everyone else names, but again that doesn't magically turn 40k into a cooperative game rather than a competitive one.
That's assuming a lot that is not anywhere in their post. In fact, Toofast even says that the competitive and non-competitive players are two separate groups that don't really interact.
Yup, lots of assumptions from people who have never met me and projection from people who are apparently very insecure. I said nobody is having fun wrong, but a new player w a casual votann list probably won't have fun against an Eldar player with a GT winning list and GT experience. Rather than the Eldar player bringing 2,000 extra points of an entirely separate army everywhere he goes, or the votann player abandoning his new army just to compete, those players should play with like-minded groups. How is this a controversial opinion?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/08/18 22:32:34
Andykp wrote: Why is it so popular as a competitive game?
Because for many people a bad competitive game is better than no competitive game at all and no other miniatures game comes close to what 40k offers for competitive play.
You mean size of events and availability of games/events etc?
Andykp wrote: You mean size of events and availability of games/events etc?
Exactly. 40k has a critical mass effect where it dominates the market because it dominates the market. Other competitive miniatures games get their turn in second place occasionally (WM/H, X-Wing, etc) but few of them have any lasting success and competitive play rapidly fades away once the peak passes. So if you want to play a competitive miniatures game you can either play the flawed game that is available or sit at home thinking about how cool it would be to play a game.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2023/08/18 23:01:30
Andykp wrote: Why is it so popular as a competitive game?
Because for many people a bad competitive game is better than no competitive game at all and no other miniatures game comes close to what 40k offers for competitive play.
You mean size of events and availability of games/events etc?
You can go to almost any wargaming club and even if they don't currently play a GW game you can bet that if you offer to play one chances are you will find one or more people who do have armies and who can be convinced to play.
You basically can't do that with any other game. Even One Page Rules, which can use GW models, isn't as widely known about.
That's a huge boon for anyone because it means you can collect a 40K army and know that you can get games. Considering armies are big financial and time investments, that's a massive boon. Many other games you run the risk of being the only person at the club with a force. That means you might have to buy two modest armies; paint them up; get a board together and spend weeks/months running demo games (to which you might only get one or two try it out now and then) and keep promoting it a LOT locally to get anyone interested enough to invest into it and get beyond demo/trial games.
Not everyone has the dedication and energy to do that. Plus it means regularly turning up all the time; you can't just go on a once off every so often.
CaulynDarr wrote: All the while a player goes 5-0 with Tau by cheating through a whole major GT. All because the game is short on qualified judges and good tournament etiquette.
It's also because a lot of judges just lack the will to punish cheaters, and would rather everyone just be chill, even when it's called out. And FLG in particular is *very* slimy about not punishing cheaters.
