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 Tawnis wrote:
So l long as the competitive is structured a certain way, most events will follow suit because that's what the competitive players want to practice for (and thus what they think the majority of people want).

An obsession with balance for competitive play with money and prizes at stake is reasonable.

And it hasn't always been the case as there were many years where a handful of armies / units won everything worth winning, and if you didn't have those particular combinations then you had the pleasure of donating your entry fee to the winners prize pot.

It has been a while since I played in any tournament myself but that was a casual one, enough people got together to rent a space. I guess that is going to be more difficult for some than others and if money is going out you always need to ensure enough people turn up to cover it. But for pre-existing shops/clubs doing a game night perhaps speak to the owner about a legends tournament as you never know.

 Tawnis wrote:
Yes and no. Did GW ever try hosting an actual combat patrol tournament so that competitive players would take it seriously? That's not totally on them, other tournaments could have done it too, but if they want to set a precedent it's up to them to start. So l long as the competitive is structured a certain way, most events will follow suit because that's what the competitive players want to practice for (and thus what they think the majority of people want).

When combat patrol first came out, there was a big launch event at my FLGS, and there was something like 40 people there, it was really successful. But then they just never did another one, so local interest in the format died out.

Cross posting this from the other thread:

Balance isn't the only thing competitive players demand. The thing that tends to kill competitive games faster than imbalance is actually stagnation. Competitively players play an ungodly number of games and if they ever feel like they've seen it all or "solved" it in any sense, they'll jump ship for a new challenge. Combat Patrol takes way too much control away from players without having any more gameplay complexity to provide meaningful choices in game either.

Though to add something new to this, our club is running a Spearhead tournament this weekend. I'll be curious to see how it goes. People seem to like the format, but our AoS community has a tendency to tire of things quickly so I'll be curious to see how it lasts. I will say that I think something Spearhead does better than Combat Patrol as a product is provide boxes that feel like they have a variety of units. I think Combat Patrol really suffers from the contents not really feeling like they cover much of an army.

 LunarSol wrote:


Though to add something new to this, our club is running a Spearhead tournament this weekend. I'll be curious to see how it goes. People seem to like the format, but our AoS community has a tendency to tire of things quickly so I'll be curious to see how it lasts. I will say that I think something Spearhead does better than Combat Patrol as a product is provide boxes that feel like they have a variety of units. I think Combat Patrol really suffers from the contents not really feeling like they cover much of an army.

Spearhead works better because they made an actual gamemode out of it and balanced the datasheets with that in mind.

the 40k combat patrols that have vehicles have such an easy time against the ones that don't.
In spearhead, those vehicles would arrive later in the game, or the chaff would be able to be brought back when they die

I expect Combat Patrol to be a "thing" for 40k next edition. They like to test this stuff out in Sigmar first.

 LunarSol wrote:
I expect Combat Patrol to be a "thing" for 40k next edition. They like to test this stuff out in Sigmar first.

The current combat patrol was the testing bed for spearhead lol

 VladimirHerzog wrote:

 LunarSol wrote:
I expect Combat Patrol to be a "thing" for 40k next edition. They like to test this stuff out in Sigmar first.

The current combat patrol was the testing bed for spearhead lol

Well, hopefully it improves with each iteration

 LunarSol wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
Yes and no. Did GW ever try hosting an actual combat patrol tournament so that competitive players would take it seriously? That's not totally on them, other tournaments could have done it too, but if they want to set a precedent it's up to them to start. So l long as the competitive is structured a certain way, most events will follow suit because that's what the competitive players want to practice for (and thus what they think the majority of people want).

When combat patrol first came out, there was a big launch event at my FLGS, and there was something like 40 people there, it was really successful. But then they just never did another one, so local interest in the format died out.

Cross posting this from the other thread:

Balance isn't the only thing competitive players demand. The thing that tends to kill competitive games faster than imbalance is actually stagnation. Competitively players play an ungodly number of games and if they ever feel like they've seen it all or "solved" it in any sense, they'll jump ship for a new challenge. Combat Patrol takes way too much control away from players without having any more gameplay complexity to provide meaningful choices in game either.

Though to add something new to this, our club is running a Spearhead tournament this weekend. I'll be curious to see how it goes. People seem to like the format, but our AoS community has a tendency to tire of things quickly so I'll be curious to see how it lasts. I will say that I think something Spearhead does better than Combat Patrol as a product is provide boxes that feel like they have a variety of units. I think Combat Patrol really suffers from the contents not really feeling like they cover much of an army.

True, that's why I was originally saying that somewhat restrictive lists are better, kind of like how they did Boarding action. There's a limited number of units you can use, but there is still some choice and flexibility.

My overall point was that I think it would be much more healthy for the game to properly support multiple formats rather than make multiple formats and throw 90% of their support behind one.

I think there's another three elements to the concept of balance that's very important to highlight - confidence, skill and mathematics

Confidence+skill
Warhammer has very little in the way of game education. Sure there's lots of lets-plays on youtube; loads of articles on how to convert, paint, sculpt*; build tables and more.

But actual "how to play" is very poorly covered beyond the mechanics of the game rules. I think this, in the case of Warhammer, is further exacerbated by entirely new rules every 3 years; but even other fantasy and sci-fi wargames often don't have much of an education element to their communities for the game itself. You don't have a monthly magazine, training books, ranking system, educational tiers and more like Bridge has. Or Chess or many sports.

Now why is this important when it comes to balance and confidence. Simply put because there's very little education, players have very little confidence in their own skills. Or at least reduced confidence. They might be brash about the number of wins they have for sure, but they aren't actually confidence in their game skills.

So when you put that "legend" model on the table not only do players have less idea how to tackle it (even if they look at its profile); but they also don't have the confidence to tackle it. If they lose against it its the rules for legends being too good. If they win against it great, they won against greater odds; whilst the player that lost might well blame Legends being "too out of date" to work right and leaving them at a disadvantage.

So I think this is one core aspect of why people, even in casual settings, push for the official rules and official state of play. They want to reduce the number of variables as much as they can. It's the same reason you see a rise in mirror-style map design because that, again, helps eliminate a variable of difference.


Mathematics,
"I can tell who will win a game by the models in each army list before the first dice or deployment has even happened"

Is a statement I've read more than once and I'm sure others have. Warhammer, even with random elements, has a strong mathematical element to it and that feeds into the game. When you have such statements openly made and accepted in the community and when its potentially possible to achieve it; it stands to reason that it would promote a desire to see as even a footing as possible and that would inevitably be with the "official core current rules".

Even if we also accept that GW are NOT creating such a system. That their game design has flaws in its implementation and approach that don't set it up for such an end-state and that the re-set every 3 years (and major reset every 6) openly works against even achieving such an end goal.



Add those elements together and its no wonder to me that players want to use the most official structured system possible even without being hyper competitive. Back in the "golden days" this meant excluding Forgewrold and Unique Characters; today its Legends. Nothing has really changed in the rules around the models** and its shifted to potentially excluding "Legends".


*although a bit more of a grey area to get into more advanced stuff

**I will concede that "back in the day" named characters could and were distinctly and clearly overpowered at times.

I think its pretty natural to be wary of anything labeled "not designed for competitive play" which is where I think GW gets it wrong with the way it markets Legends. I think the focus on accessibility is the bigger issue on the table and selling it that way makes such models a lot more palatable than the current "Warning: May Result in a Poor Game Experience" kind of tag that it receives.

Even as I say this though, its really more how the community describes them than how GW markets Legends. I think the increased push to retire old kits is definitely part of that, but the language of modern Legends is significantly more encouraging than prior editions. I just don't think they've really pushed the notion that its an accessibility issue as much as they should.

I've always felt the drive for balance is GW acting to prevent "that Guy" lists and the way people seem to get hyper competitive.

Saying that i do think its damaging the game ive always enjoyed building themed fluffy lists and trying to win with non optimal but fun list, but the drive for balance seems to be culling a lot of options making fluffy lists realy hard to do

It’s not ‘our’ obsession, I would be delighted to see GW revert to irregular only-if-it’s-needed balancing and leave the micromanaging to independent tournament networks. Thirty-four pages of designers notes? In an edition trying to reduce bloat? With two hardcover art books needed to game? Haven’t played in a year. Bring back an A5 softcover rulebook with three deployment maps and missions and I’ll get three new kits for each of my armies.

I'm of the opinion that Games Workshop is terrified of leaving the balancing to independent tournament networks, because said networks already proved they are able to organize and create standardized rules and that a good portion of the playerbase will adopt said rules.

The end result would be GW slowly but surely losing control over their own game system.

 lindsay40k wrote:
It’s not ‘our’ obsession, I would be delighted to see GW revert to irregular only-if-it’s-needed balancing and leave the micromanaging to independent tournament networks. Thirty-four pages of designers notes? In an edition trying to reduce bloat? With two hardcover art books needed to game? Haven’t played in a year. Bring back an A5 softcover rulebook with three deployment maps and missions and I’ll get three new kits for each of my armies.

What armies do you play?

Legends has nothing to do with balance.

Cultists with Firearms aren't objectively better than the non-Legends version because GW somehow balanced them deliberately that way.
They're like that because GW doesn't care and they're waiting behind the woodshed for GW to put them down for good.

CorwinB wrote:
Isn't part of the problem here with Legends units that there are a lot of people in clubs/FLGS that consider casual games as tournament practice, and only want to apply competitive list building and rules (terrain...) ?

There are ton of people who never played a tournament game in their life and their list look 80-100% like a tournament list. The smaller the model range, the fewer builds a codex supports and the less powerful the engine of an army the fewer lists exists. Often there is only one valid way to play, unless someone wants to lose game at the pre set up phase of the game. Oddly enough tournaments, or rather team tournaments, allow for more list varity, because an army can be protected from certain match ups. The BT swarm lists in teams is a valid way to play BT, trying it in a place where people play votan or any shoty army that kills 15-20 marine bodies per turn is not a valid investment. Now if w40k armies were free it would be different. But they aren't, so the bigger the gap between monthly income and a w40k/AoS, the smaller the chance to see weaker or out right bad armies. Because people can't just risk the investment of years of saving up,painting etc to then get a product that isn't fun to use.

What is the main problem with legends IMO is that GW uses it as a "we don't want you to play with this things, go buy more/other things" hammer. It is just an evolution of load out changes for units/vehicles, bases sized etc. Plus w40k right now is, especialy at lower skill level a solved game. Scenario X, secondaries Y, you have a set up of unit to do those missions and stop your opponent from using theirs. That is what people learn, play online and those that don't have time for the first two, get coached on. With terrain being pre set up for missions, you can litteraly have a list of what to do on which turn. Now sometimes stuff goes wrong, some armis are harder to play then others, so when rolls don't do the avarge some people get lost. And if they had to deal with legend units, ones they don't know and don't know how to deal with, on which they were never coached, the game becomes less fun, because they don't know the result of turns 1-3 in advance. I mean just imagine someone comes and drops a WS 100% bike army on the table , with FW tanks, and the person on the other side of the table don't know what to do. And they spend money to know what to do. On the models, on the play time, time learning or getting coached. If they can they will always say no. It is as if tomorrow GW said that in order to run any type of thing requires the oppossing player being okey with it, the thing would be gone from the list next day all around the world.

Karol, the thing you have to understand is that to the vast majority of the players of this game, the idea that anyone would want or need a warhammer coach is utterly ridiculous.

For every one person who actually goes to a tournament, I'd call it a conservative estimate that there are a hundred who never will and may not even know such things exist.

And given the way detachments work, I'd say most factions (with dexes so far this ed) have it list two builds. Granted, I don't play as often as most people on Dakka, so I certainly could be wrong.

You have "sport mind" - you went to a sport school. You are a competitor to the core, and your world view has been formed exclusively through that lens. Most 40k players just want to have fun- they play 40k like it was Monopoly, or Snakes and Ladders.

 PenitentJake wrote:
Karol, the thing you have to understand is that to the vast majority of the players of this game, the idea that anyone would want or need a warhammer coach is utterly ridiculous.

Actually I was going to say that I've never actually seen or heard of a Warhammer Coach.

As I've noted before, one thing Warhammer certainly seems to actually lack IS formal training systems. It doesn't even have to be for competitive games; just about learning the game beyond the functional element of the game mechanics.

Now of course Karol's approach is an extreme and I'd argue a "coach" that has only taught a person to do with very specific preconstructed armies to play against is likely not much of a coach in the first place.

Unless my English skills completely fail me here, getting coached is not the same as hiring a coach, and not nearly as uncommon you two make it out to be. I frequently helped newer players understand rules or even their own (brand new) army, but i'd never call myself a "coach".

nekooni wrote:
Unless my English skills completely fail me here, getting coached is not the same as hiring a coach, and not nearly as uncommon you two make it out to be. I frequently helped newer players understand rules or even their own (brand new) army, but i'd never call myself a "coach".

A lot of YouTubers sell coaching services. That's mostly what's being referred to here. Not coaching as a general concept.

Competitive vs casual can be a useful distinction, but I think it can also be misleading. Another way to look at games of 40K on the tabletop are those played between close friends/family and those played between acquaintances/strangers.

If I am playing 40K against my (now adult) son we aren't concerned about fairness or balance. We play with whatever we feel like and adjust the rules to suit our purposes. My Librarian on a Bike with a bunch of Ravenwing bikes and Landspeeders might be there. If I am playing a pick-up game at the store against a relative stranger I am not going to take Legends and Matched-Play with the current tourney pack will be my assumption. This would be to ensure some level of fairness. I would take the same approach even with gamers that I know well from a decade of playing with them. I don't think I am alone in this. Now, I do play at local tourneys, but you won't find me in ITC rankings! I feel it would be poor form to bring Legends to a pick-up game. If that makes me a bad person then I will just have to live with it.

Regarding fixed lists, I think that part of the success of 40K (and indeed Warhammer) has been the ability for a player to make their own list and express themselves doing so. I only have my little community to go by, but even though a ton of development and promotion seems to have gone into Spearhead for AOS, it landed with a thud here. I was keen to try, but people want to make their armies.

I do think that clubs/FLGS would do well to have Combat Patrol and Spearhead leagues to get people into the hobby, but none of that addresses the issue of Legends.

I was sad to see most of my Ravenwing ride off into Legends, but I have accepted that I will not field them in Matched Play/pickup games at the FLGS and moved on.

I think it's poor form to just ASSUME Legends are okay for any given pickup game.

If you ask "Mind if I take [LEGENDS UNIT]?" and are willing to take no for an answer if it comes to that, it's no biggie.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think it's poor form to just ASSUME Legends are okay for any given pickup game.

If you ask "Mind if I take [LEGENDS UNIT]?" and are willing to take no for an answer if it comes to that, it's no biggie.

I broadly agree with that, particularly if its a a hybrid pick-up game where we are using a club chat board to set it up.

 JNAProductions wrote:
I think it's poor form to just ASSUME Legends are okay for any given pickup game.

If you ask "Mind if I take [LEGENDS UNIT]?" and are willing to take no for an answer if it comes to that, it's no biggie.

That seems to be the current way people expect things. It's just at odds with how Legends are presented. The way GW talks about them, the assumption SHOULD be that they are always allowed unless stated otherwise.

 Tawnis wrote:
The way GW talks about them, the assumption SHOULD be that they are always allowed unless stated otherwise.

But from the way GW acts about them, the assumption that GW doesn't care too much about whether the rules are fair or fun is a reasonable one.

If Legends units were part of regular balance updates instead of being shoved off into a corner (until they're quietly rendered unusable within a year or two), things might be different, but as it stands: Why would you assume that Legends units are a balanced, complete, normal part of the game that ought to be included by default?

 catbarf wrote:

But from the way GW acts about them, the assumption that GW doesn't care too much about whether the rules are fair or fun is a reasonable one.

If Legends units were part of regular balance updates instead of being shoved off into a corner (until they're quietly rendered unusable within a year or two), things might be different, but as it stands: Why would you assume that Legends units are a balanced, complete, normal part of the game that ought to be included by default?

I don't think the stance that these models won't receive balance updates (unless they're somehow a huge problem) is necessarily a bad one. The goal is to still support the model without it adding to the bloat of the game more than necessary. There's enough units that get completely ignored as is, I don't hate a list making that stance official.

Again, I think they need to present it more as an accessibility decision rather than a balance one, but the messaging on Legends has changed so much each edition its hard to say what GW is thinking. I do think 10th, in part because they're pushing more things to Legends than ever before, has had more permissive messaging for Legends than ever before and I'd like it to stay this way. In a lot of ways it reminds me of the adoption of Forge World in 8th, where we the barriers were significantly lowered, but it took a while for players to accept modes that had traditionally been shunned.

I'd be happy to see GW lean more on Legends personally, but the lack of consistency in how things are handled makes it hard to take a firm stance for long on anything.

 catbarf wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
The way GW talks about them, the assumption SHOULD be that they are always allowed unless stated otherwise.

But from the way GW acts about them, the assumption that GW doesn't care too much about whether the rules are fair or fun is a reasonable one.

If Legends units were part of regular balance updates instead of being shoved off into a corner (until they're quietly rendered unusable within a year or two), things might be different, but as it stands: Why would you assume that Legends units are a balanced, complete, normal part of the game that ought to be included by default?

I assume they are a normal, non-tourney, part of the game & ought to be included by default because GW tells us so.

Balance? That's a different thing altogether - I don't assume the game is balanced to start with. I never have. So why would I hold a Legends unit to a standard I don't expect from any other unit?

GWs obsession with money is what's hurting the game. They want to have the most profitable setup, and the money is in the meta chasers + new players, not in the people with old models they don't sell anymore.

Don't let anyone gaslight you into thinking this bs is anything but GW being the same gak company with an amazing (and monopolized) product.

Eh GW have a long way to go before they are a meta-chasing firm. Like a VERY LONG way considering a lot of gamers don't meta-chase in the least and once they have an army they stick with that army and even if they get a new army the old one is still going to be kept.

Gamers are very unlikely to get the new model for their previous/existing army if GW just removed half the line. We've seen this disgruntlement with the Stormcast update in AoS recently and with the sheer disaster that was the AoS launch.



Aggressive meta-chasing tactics and product invalidating are not things that work en-mass with the wargame market. Meta's do evolve and things do get put into legends, but honestly I don't think its GW being smart with marketing. They aren't acting like Hasbro.

If anything a bunch of things going to legends speaks more of internal production elements (shelving lots of FW resin models); inter-departmental segmentation (removing Beastmen from AoS to put them in Old World) and range product focuses (eg updating stormcast again even though they didn't need it because they are the product show-faction for the starter set every 3 years).



There are elements of marketing in there, GW are not without it; but honestly a lot of the choices don't seem to be profit driven and seem to be more internal to how GW operates and manages and allocates/divides resources.

 catbarf wrote:

 Tawnis wrote:
The way GW talks about them, the assumption SHOULD be that they are always allowed unless stated otherwise.

But from the way GW acts about them, the assumption that GW doesn't care too much about whether the rules are fair or fun is a reasonable one.

If Legends units were part of regular balance updates instead of being shoved off into a corner (until they're quietly rendered unusable within a year or two), things might be different, but as it stands: Why would you assume that Legends units are a balanced, complete, normal part of the game that ought to be included by default?

This is only based of the handful of Legends units that I own, but I've found them either decently balanced of underpowered at the start of 10th and for the most part. Typically as power creeps up either slowly or quickly depending on the edition, Legends units get less and less powerful, so while I don't consider them a "balanced" part of the game in the term of being good enough to be in optimal lists, that was never the intent of Legends. If when 11th comes out we get updated Legends, I have no problem with them giving Legneds a pass once per edition, if it's like last time where we got them in 8th and saw nothing more until 10th, I'd be more included to agree with you on that. Time will tell.

Them being rendered unusable after a period is certainly a problem, but that's a different issue altogether.

CorwinB wrote:
Isn't part of the problem here with Legends units that there are a lot of people in clubs/FLGS that consider casual games as tournament practice, and only want to apply competitive list building and rules (terrain...) ?

That's my problem. I was recently motivated into trying again and yep all 12 people were not interested in anything other than tourney practice games because of the perpetual league running. Maybe in another 4 months Ill try again; I do miss having a hobby.