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So Rob Symes, the former host of warhammer TV just launched a pretty awesome website:
www.Thehonestwargamer.com
It is a pretty awesome resource for anyone trying to get into competitive Aos.
They have a workbook that takes someone through choosing and starting a new army.
Sample lists and detailed rundown of their playstyles by many of the top tournament players in the UK and the US and detailed stats of the best performing armies in tournaments worldwide.
It is a pretty great website and is all free. I recommend checking it out.
,

What is "tsports"?

Is AOS now officially a "sport"

I guess its as much a sport as 'esports'.....
Or Chess.....

This is an unresolved and repeatedly held debate. And we are starting to see cash prizes (store vouchers and product have long been part of many tournament prizes) from what I've heard/read on the internet.

Interesting. The company that makes the worst suited rules for competitive play is now leading the way with 40k and AOS in the realm of "tsports".

Carry on lol.

Deathwatch101 wrote:
I guess its as much a sport as 'esports'.....
Or Chess.....

This is an unresolved and repeatedly held debate. And we are starting to see cash prizes (store vouchers and product have long been part of many tournament prizes) from what I've heard/read on the internet.

Yeah, I remember people(self included) laughing at “esports” years ago and now its a near half billion dollar industry. It will be interesting to see if the tsports movement gains traction.

I feel there is definitely some demand for it, as any decently sized and well produced tournament will stream games at their top tables with commentary.

auticus wrote:
The company that makes the worst suited rules for competitive play is now leading the way with 40k and AOS in the realm of "tsports".

The company isn’t involved. This is a fan driven initiative, and says as much in the opening line, right under the video:

We aim to be the best independent source of tSports coverage in the world.

Its also not going to be solely 40K/AoS centric from what the site creator said in previous podcasts/shows. Might not be like that initially, but the ultimate goal is to make it a hub for all sorts of competitive tabletop games. Wether that pans out, we’ll see.

auticus wrote:
Interesting. The company that makes the worst suited rules for competitive play is now leading the way with 40k and AOS in the realm of "tsports".

Carry on lol.

Hey don't knock it off. We can become Olympic Medalists now. I mean either the Olympics or someone is trying to get the Olympics have e-sports in an event. I also read people are getting visas in the US as "athletes" to compete in e-sport games. We shouldn't be that far off now eh?

The company isn’t involved. This is a fan driven initiative, and says as much in the opening line, right under the video:

Sorry. What I should have said was:

Interesting. The fans have chosen the rulesets that are the least suited for competitive gaming to be their flagship "tsports" for competitive gaming.

auticus wrote:

The company isn’t involved. This is a fan driven initiative, and says as much in the opening line, right under the video:

Sorry. What I should have said was:

Interesting. The fans have chosen the rulesets that are the least suited for competitive gaming to be their flagship "tsports" for competitive gaming.

While GW rules may not be (ok, they aren't) the best for competition, Warhammer, both 40k and Fantasy/AOS, are easily the most recognizable and widely played. It makes sense that a burgeoning "tsport" would start with something very popular. If it is going to take off, it wouldn't if it started with a barely known, hard to find, but solid rule-set game.

Warmachine seemed to be on the cusp of doing this a couple years ago, back before Mk III put a massive dose of flies in the ointment and PP killed their forums and Press Gang program (regardless of the reasons, it had the effect of setting back the growth and community a large amount).

While I agree with you, unfortunately what that does is set the standard for what is now competitive.

Meaning 40k and AOS with all the things that make them not really suitable for "tsports" type gaming, has become the standard for competitive gaming.

Its like a fusion reactor. It feeds itself and continues to grow and there's no need to come up with a better ruleset more suited to competitive play because... well everyone knows very few people will play it when there is the standard that everyone will play instead.

 Valander wrote:

auticus wrote:

The company isn’t involved. This is a fan driven initiative, and says as much in the opening line, right under the video:

Sorry. What I should have said was:

Interesting. The fans have chosen the rulesets that are the least suited for competitive gaming to be their flagship "tsports" for competitive gaming.

While GW rules may not be (ok, they aren't) the best for competition, Warhammer, both 40k and Fantasy/AOS, are easily the most recognizable and widely played. It makes sense that a burgeoning "tsport" would start with something very popular. If it is going to take off, it wouldn't if it started with a barely known, hard to find, but solid rule-set game.

Warmachine seemed to be on the cusp of doing this a couple years ago, back before Mk III put a massive dose of flies in the ointment and PP killed their forums and Press Gang program (regardless of the reasons, it had the effect of setting back the growth and community a large amount).

Well. Using 40k/AOS for competive sport is like using lottery for competive sport. About equally serious as competive game.

auticus wrote:
Interesting. The company that makes the worst suited rules for competitive play is now leading the way with 40k and AOS in the realm of "tsports".

Carry on lol.

This. ^^

GW games are not made for tight competitive game play and often have such large holes you could drive a bus through it. But that doesn't make then "bad" games. It just that they focus on models and games that make the best use of their miniatures range. Games played for mutual fun between one or more people.

Games like WM/H, Malifaux, Infinity etc are made for competitive play. If we are going to go down the route of "tSports", lets at least showcase games that are designed for that purpose.

And games like Infinity, Malifaux etc.. are tiny in their market impact. If you go to nearly any general game club you can be pretty sure you will get games of 40K and fairly sure you can get ones of AoS. A few years back Warmachine was a near certain, however as outlined above, they've set themselves back and have yet to recover. Nearly any other game system is a case of turning up and seeing IF anyone else plays at all or has even heard of it!

So yes it makes a lot of sense that, with Warmachine out of the running for a while, 40K and AoS are going to rise to the top as the flagships here. Heck if GW hadn't buried its head under the Kirby era in terms of community outreach and interaction they could already be there right now. There's no denying that MTG's pattern and behaviour has already set it years ahead of wargames in terms of organising the competitive scene in a serious way.

Warmachine was set to be this, but something went wrong around MKIII release and their panic at shutting down a huge amount of their community interaction and outreach. I think that hopefully MKIII will either pull itself out of the doldrums or they'll jump to a MKIV and do a big relaunch focused around that. Certainly its a tighter rules system set for the competitive end, but it needs to push itself back into being the second biggest again!

I'm not a warmachine fan but I'd much rather a ruleset designed for competitive play be showcased as a "tsport" and would rather see a warmachine and infinity being pushed for such a purpose over AOS and 40k.

My fear is that the rules deficiencies and balancing issues of AOS will now be "validated" and just continue business as usual.

While GW has a 30+ year history of bad balance, so this is not anything new, I was hoping that they'd start taking balancing more seriously and away from their marketing department.

Now it would seem that that approach will be validated.

Lets not get too carried away here. There have been tournamnets both local, national and even international using AoS/Warhammer/40K for many of those 30 years.

Sure it might not be the perfect rules system, but GW has shown a LOT more attention to it in the last two or three years and if the competitive scene kicks off in a big way then surely GW will see that improvement is resulting in improved performance of sales and marketing which would only reinforce BETTER rules writing and structure.


Surely the game getting more attention, increasing its marketing and awareness and also rewarding competitive events and such is a good thing.

The golden age of tournaments back in 6th and early 7th edition didn't encourage them to write better tighter rules, so I am not confident that this new golden age will do that either.

Yes but that was under different management who clearly had a very different focus on how to manage the company. Already we've seen huge changes, yes its still the same staff in many positions, but the attitude has shifted and we might well see more significant improvement.

Also an organised tournament setting would alos have potential to produce its own rules packs to modify any known glaring issues; heck many do this already (and even then people endlessly argue that they are not balanced solutions )

We shall see.

I really dislike that guy ever since on Warhammer TV he'd make nonsensical comments about things like "They are entering the armour phase" and various other ridiculous things or just go ranting on stuff during a game instead of talking about the game. Apparently, he's a pretty good tournament player, so he was putting on an act of being a clueless moron on the show or something, but it left a sour taste with anything he does ever since.

Wayniac wrote:
I really dislike that guy ever since on Warhammer TV he'd make nonsensical comments about things like "They are entering the armour phase" and various other ridiculous things or just go ranting on stuff during a game instead of talking about the game. Apparently, he's a pretty good tournament player, so he was putting on an act of being a clueless moron on the show or something, but it left a sour taste with anything he does ever since.

I think he's well aware of his performance in the early days of WHTV. I believe it was on Vince Venturella's show a week or two ago that he actually talked about how he didn't know what he was doing starting out and it was pretty bare bones as far as guidance from his higher ups at the time. He then went on to say that he's been reading and watching extensively of how people announce sports/e-sports and he's attempting to get better with more game knowledge and color commentary.

His show is fun and informative, for me at least, but I can understand if you don't prefer his style/mannerisms. NFL games can be ruined for me if certain announcers are calling the game for instance.

The other thing I hate is this desire to "e-sport" tabletop. There's another guy, who runs Nights at the Game Table, trying to do the same thing with sponsorships (he "sponsors" Nick Nanavanti the 40k champion) and other things that are more suitable to League of Legends than Warhammer.

The desire to make tabletop something you can make tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars with sponsors and world championships has been a thing tried for almost twenty years now.

I read about the desire on a daily basis.

I am fine with that... I just don't understand why AOS and 40k are seen as the pinnacle of that attempt other than thats where all the gamers want to stay for whatever reason.

Actually I think that, if anything, more exposure for competitive Warhammer would result in an improvement of balance. It would not take long for the realization that people would rather watch a diverse array of armies and army builds than the same handful over and over. Imagine if an esports game only saw, say, 10% of the available characters actually played at championships. Or to use Starcraft as an example, imagine if half the units & upgrades for each faction never saw play and half of what was left only saw limited/niche use.

And to address the obvious, more than 10% of armies do well at tournaments but that does not account for build diversity and the number of different units actually being used. After factoring in that only a fraction of options/builds for a given army actually show up in top lists the diversity of competitive options compared to the options overall is quite low.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

auticus wrote:
The desire to make tabletop something you can make tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars with sponsors and world championships has been a thing tried for almost twenty years now.

I read about the desire on a daily basis.

I am fine with that... I just don't understand why AOS and 40k are seen as the pinnacle of that attempt other than thats where all the gamers want to stay for whatever reason.

Because at the end of the day people like the fluff, like the models, and the games are pretty fun. Further, the kind of narrative/cinematic feel GW goes for is a lot more entertaining to watch.

Lets be honest one reason wargaming hasn't followed electronic games and such into "sports" is because the companies haven't had the interest too.

Games Workshop pretty much washed its hands of the whole tournament scene under Kirby and wasn't making any move back toward it. That in itself significantly curtailed any kind of growth and organisation because GW is the market leader in a big way.

Privateer Press were doing REALLY well with it and could have gone further but it seems something really messed up in the last few years and they've undone a huge amount of ground. Their lower quality plastic issues; cutting their forums and Press Ganger system and the balance and rollout of 3rd edition have really hit them hard and sapped a lot of their power. Plus other games rose up whilst GW was languishing and bleeding fans so now the market is far more diverse and competitive than it was 10 years ago (Kickstarter is partly to blame for that, even though many of hte games that start there can only just make it to fund before collapsing in on themselves a bit)


Look at Magic the Gathering, look at Starcraft. Both of those are big international competitive sporting events now and both are directly driven that way by their parent companies. The parent company helps provide a sense of unity, direction and order that lasts and is not reliant on peoples free time and hobby money. Thus it has far more potential to set things up and be the backbone of long term organisation that the local scene can more readily tap into.
GW could do it but I think they wont, but their game has enough power to get there on its own, albeit slower. And if the competitive scene starts to market and turn money and generate bigger revenue for GW you can BET the quality of their rules will improve to service that growing market. Heck we've already seen this and that's without any sponsoring or such on the table, just with the raw power of (mostly existing and former) fans wallets.

Not sure WoTC and M;TG's current state of OP is what anyone should be aspiring to, falling attendance, endless drama, accusations of cheating and collusion ignored or fobbed off if the accused is part of the 'in-crowd', all the shenanigans that occur when money is on the table, and thats with one of the tightest rulesets ever written, which GW's are not

From 1999-2006 there was a huge push on world championship warhammer. There was even a series of indy GTs created with the sole purpose of national qualifiers and a world championship complete with carving up the US into qualifying regions, and a sponsor / reward system being implemented.

In that time, and this was before Kirby, GW still didn't do anything to tighten up their rules. Granted in 2000 warhammer was at its most balanced but after that they went back to their model of rotating power creep and imbalance to sell models and keep the tournament meta buying new models on the regular.

So I don't really believe that this is going to make them suddenly become better balanced.

I believe what they do has been what they do for 30 odd years and that that is their intentional business model.

What is effectively being done with this honest wargamer site is that the pinnacle power builds will be highlighted, and in a more centralized place.

Good for organization. Great if you are wanting to powergame and place in tournaments. But I think really in the end what will end up happening is even more mono building by the community than ever before if it takes off because its taking the "whats OP and help me make my tournament army list" threads and centralizing it into one place to click and get your list from.

I reckon if the games turn out to be poorly balanced or samey because of poor rules design, the channel and idea will simply fall flat.

But will it? I don't think so. I don't think the channel would fall flat because of poorly balanced or samey army lists.

I think for a lot of people that is a non issue or even desired.

Yeah, I'm with auticus. The fact ITC is so popular and guys like Frontline Gaming are held up as paragons of the hobby shows that people WANT unbalanced, samey lists as long as they feel they can show how "leet" they are with min/maxing. Auticus can speak to this with his depth of knowledge at how listbuilding and combos are seen as the pinnacle of the game.

It's not technically a bad thing, just it seems to be completely missing the point.

I personally feel that many people don't want unbalance, but what they like is the army they play to be strong and if playing strong is as easy as picking "X" army with "Y" list then its easier for them.

Ergo its not that people seek imbalance, but that most people naturally seek the most easy path.



Clearly if extreme imbalance is present then the path can be very easy to see and operate, but it will generally end up being a poor choice in the long run. All the "other" armies are too weak to provide fun or challenge so they dwindle in popularity and, at the extreme, you can end up with the same army VS the same army - which since both are "auto win" actually puts the game right back into a balanced situation.

So you actually end up with the same (or similar) result either way. However with a more balanced game you have far more visual variety which is important. If the visual and creative side were not important we'd be playing with tokens and counters and the model side would close down fast.

If we go for alternating power lists, such as we had for many years from GW, then it can work okish because the turn-over at least changes up the meta so that it shifts around a little too fast for most to just keep buying into the new power army. However that system, esp when it ran too slow, still left many armies underpowered and thus falling further and further behind.

On a practical level that is clearly not a good idea. It means disgruntled customers, it means inventory sitting on shelves collecting dust, it means lost income from investments and it means increase investment costs to relaunch a dead army. Meanwhile you can't just cut them away; armies that die off totally send shockwaves through the game and can unseat a game very fast from its playerbase if they feel that the developers will take away their toys.

Look at how famous squats are known even by people who never gamed with or against them or might not even have been gaming at the time squats were out.

You can recover, but a company has to invest like crazy to do it and that isn't healthy - big swings are not what you want because for all the profit of an upswing, you get an equally big downswing that can run the risk of knocking you right out (GW is a little stronger than most, but if they kept making the wrong choices then yes they could kill themselves)

 NinthMusketeer wrote:
Imagine if an esports game only saw, say, 10% of the available characters actually played at championships.

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