Elbows wrote:
This is something that kind of baffles me. I think I understand and can appreciate the idea of vague point values vs. strict point values - but I've never understood people saying "Now we can play X way!". You could always play X way. There isn't a more rules-limited gaming community than the Games Workshop/Warhammer one for some reason.

I've genuinely seen people say "Well in 8th, we can just take what we own and put it on the table and play a game.", as if they were somehow magically bound from doing this beforehand? For pick-up games I suspect you'll still find people preferring match play (because of concerns over winning/losing, bla bla bla), so I don't think the Narrative version really offers anything other than a faster way to calculate points. People who were already playing house rules, narrative games, and campaigns will probably continue to do so. I can see one benefit being larger Apocalypse style games - if you want to use a lose construct for side balance --- the Narrative point values might be more easy/quick for something like that. No one wants to really spend a week working up a 7,500-10,000 list where you have to arm each sergeant, etc.

40K has always shined when people move away from the comically strict base rules that Games Workshop have put out. I see people saying "Well which of the usual ten scenarios do you want to play?". Ugh, that pains me. Scenarios are incredibly easy to work up, and only take a game or two of play testing to be useful. First time you play, be ready to add/remove stuff on the fly. There's a ton of wonderful possibilities out there, but people are way too hemmed in by a rulebook. I think it ties into the fact that you have a large portion of the Warhammer community who really only play Warhammer and may not be exposed to a variety of tabletop wargames, etc. which provide far more expansive options - and rulebooks that encourage gamer creations/house rules/custom scenarios, etc.

In short, I don't see this changing anything, really. People who played narrative based games before will continue to do so. People who were super anal about point systems and meta will continue to be, as much as possible.