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Basically, what bothers me about Narrative Play versus Matched Play is the idea that Fluffy Play and Competitive Play must be mutually opposed. If the fluff and crunch don't align, then this will innately trickle down from competitive play to pickup play, and hurt sales as new players avoid playing an individual army, lest they end up with an army that nobody wants to play against, or the casuals go "no, I don't want to play against your bandwagon."

Good competitive balance makes casual play better, and the inverse is true.

Anyone with any common sense understands that striving for good balance doesn't hurt anyone, but bad balance hurts the casual/fluff crowd more than the competitive crowd.

I can't believe this needs to be said, let alone repeated over the course of a few editions now on these boards.

Because people believe that “competitive” gaming is inherently evil, and that it harms casual gaming by its existence.

I won’t deny that allowing the ITC crowd to get their filthy hands on the 40k ruleset was a bad move, but I generally agree that a balanced game is good for everyone.

Well narrative also allows for the unfluffy stuff. I have an old Counts-As Vindicare for my Necrons stashed somewhere when I was allowed to do that, so being able to bust that out now and then is nice.

I agree completely. If you have a balanced game at the core, forging a narrative becomes much easier, and casual play suffers the most from bad balance.

Besides, if me and my friends decide to do house rule something, that's fine for casual play. We can modify the rules however we want as long as we're all ok with it.

We don't need GW to tell us how to play casually.

But good sir, surely that could not happen to this community! Why, one needs but to jaunt over to the civil conversation in any of the 5 currently active AM/Conscripts threads to begin to doubt the veracity of your claims!

Actually, it's typically just the same 10 people over, and over, and over, and over again, along with an occasional unfortunate spectator that dips a toe and then immediately regrets the toxic green slime oozing up their foot. I honestly don't know why any of them are still going. It's not like there's literally anything that could be said that would change anyone's opinion about it. It's close enough to religious conviction that I've actually considered registering as a priest over it, were it not for the fact that the thought of trying to explain any of this anyone better adjusted is seriously so goddamned embarrassing that I'm kinda sickened by it. Hrm. Maybe I should see my doctor about suspected mental illness instead.

And in spite of it, I see new player AM threads popping up, and I'm actually, seriously (if only genuinely serious for a second) proud as gak of dakka for not jumping on those posters and infecting those threads. We might keep it a sheet of paper's thickness out of those threads, by by god, we do keep it contained.

Narrative or Open play have nothing to do with "not wanting proper balance". Open play simply means that my Eldar can team up with your Tyranids and go fight some Chaos and Tau. Or we can play a 3000 point game vs. a 1,500 point game and see how long the other side holds out, etc.

There is nothing in either form which negates proper balance of units. If anything, Narrative would give you an easier way to avoid poorly balanced units (my simply changing up the scenario, etc.).

What bothers me about Narrative Play vs Matched Play is that people believe that Narrative play is the "Casual" mode of play, when a good narrative game and campaing needs much more work for all parts involved than random matched games.

 Elbows wrote:
Narrative or Open play have nothing to do with "not wanting proper balance". Open play simply means that my Eldar can team up with your Tyranids and go fight some Chaos and Tau. Or we can play a 3000 point game vs. a 1,500 point game and see how long the other side holds out, etc.

All that should be left up to the players. GW doesn't need to tell us that we can house rule stuff, they only need to provide rules, models, a bit of fluff, and balance.

They do...that's precisely what the game is for. Matched play only exists to cater to tournament play. Beyond that, who cares?

 Blacksails wrote:
Anyone with any common sense understands that striving for good balance doesn't hurt anyone, but bad balance hurts the casual/fluff crowd more than the competitive crowd.

I can't believe this needs to be said, let alone repeated over the course of a few editions now on these boards.

I agree completely. It’s hard to reason with a snowflake

 daedalus wrote:
But good sir, surely that could not happen to this community! Why, one needs but to jaunt over to the civil conversation in any of the 5 currently active AM/Conscripts threads to begin to doubt the veracity of your claims!

Actually, it's typically just the same 10 people over, and over, and over, and over again, along with an occasional unfortunate spectator that dips a toe and then immediately regrets the toxic green slime oozing up their foot. I honestly don't know why any of them are still going. It's not like there's literally anything that could be said that would change anyone's opinion about it. It's close enough to religious conviction that I've actually considered registering as a priest over it, were it not for the fact that the thought of trying to explain any of this anyone better adjusted is seriously so goddamned embarrassing that I'm kinda sickened by it. Hrm. Maybe I should see my doctor about suspected mental illness instead.

And in spite of it, I see new player AM threads popping up, and I'm actually, seriously (if only genuinely serious for a second) proud as gak of dakka for not jumping on those posters and infecting those threads. We might keep it a sheet of paper's thickness out of those threads, by by god, we do keep it contained.

Exactly accurate. I don't even get into those discussions anymore, there's no point. Its just become toxicity for toxicity sake. The only one whose opinion matters at this point is GW, and no amount of frothing madness from this forum is going to get them to do anything they don't want to do. Everyone needs to chill the heck out. I get it, its hard. I got pretty frothing angry about WFB being squatted way back when. But either move past it, or let it go and leave. Holding onto that toxic pain just makes you and everyone around you miserable. It won't change anything at this point.

clively wrote:

 Blacksails wrote:
Anyone with any common sense understands that striving for good balance doesn't hurt anyone, but bad balance hurts the casual/fluff crowd more than the competitive crowd.

I can't believe this needs to be said, let alone repeated over the course of a few editions now on these boards.

I agree completely. It’s hard to reason with a snowflake

Just like how it's impossible to take anyone that uses the term 'snowflake' unironically, seriously.

Here's a breakdown for those who don't get it:

Matched Play: Competitive, intended for tournaments and tournament like games.

Narrative: Story focused.

Open: Do what you want.

GW isn't 'imposing their will' on your game, they just created a categorical system to file games in. This way they can add things like new strategems or abilities or w/e without arsefething the tournament scene.

As for balance, you and your garagehammer buddy are always going to be better at balancing ypur own games than GW is, so who cares? Matched vs. Narrative in terms of rules is just to give tournaments a baseline.

It's weird how hard this is for 40k players when Sigmar players picked it up in like 5 minutes.