Fytharin Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 So now that I’ve gotten over the initial frustration here is my educated response to the news about unbound armies. I think fluff wise as people have been slowly chirping in, this could lead to some potentially very entertaining games. I.e. taking full company lay outs as Russ intended rather than adhering to the Force Organization chart. Running a full Canis pack and have it be legal would be an intimidating sight indeed. The problem is going to be that a lot of our player base do not play from a ‘fluff’ standpoint and this is going to be equally frustrating to not only fluff players but also casual/competitive players. GW has been throwing options after options at people and what we’ve been seeing recently is a whole new level of competitiveness arise in the lists people have been creating. This is all fine and good, especially if GW is wanting to start making WH40k a more competitive game and by giving us these options they certain appear to be doing just that. For a full year I played a card game called Magic: The Gathering. It is a highly competitive game that requires enormous amounts of money at times to keep up with the meta as well as seemingly endless options to pull from to create different styles of play. As a player you either fall into three categories. The complete casual player that tends to just play at home with friends and buy packs every now and then, not really adhering to certain formats of play. The advanced casual player that goes to the casual tournaments every Friday night and tries to loosely base his deck on the winning meta without buying the really expensive cards to do so. Then there’s the tournament/advanced player that knows the deeper rules and often buys a new deck every few months costing upwards of $500-$1000. This is kind of where I see our hobby heading at the moment unfortunately and while we may not reach those monetary figures every few months, with all the rule books that have been getting released, now a new edition and the inclusion of a “free-for-all” format I’m worried that this is going to invite a competitive nature into the game that we have not seen before. With a codex we had very limiting options and a room of set rules/units to work with and now that we have more open doors through dataslates, allies, fortifications, knights, fliers, etc; lists have the potential to be completely overwhelming for the semi-casual player. I’m already seeing the lists pop up at my FLGS that make me not want to challenge the random Joe walking around because I don’t know what the heck he’s going to be dropping on the field in his sole desire to wipe the floor with my face. For the casual/fluff player; they will need to be careful in who they challenge and ask for a game and realize that their list is probably not something to take outside of their games with friends or similar minded friends. For the competitive players; this is going to be good news because they are now going to have a lot of options this coming edition to make a truly fierce roster. The only downside is that they are going to have to be tapping into their pockets a lot more if they plan on buying every new piece of information that gets released. GW has shown recently that their turn out of codexes and rules in various formats is a lot quicker than they have been in the recent past. The competitive player in me is excited and yet I can’t help but remember how burnt out I got in playing competitively in MTG and really do hope that this doesn’t become the case for WH40k. I also know that personally I do not have the financial means to purchase all of the different rule books nor the time to memorize and explore it all which I know for many people will be a huge barrier keeping them from being the competitive player. In the end though, I’ll still have my dolls and will probably resign myself to painting in lonely corner howling for either a pay raise or the random fluff/casual player that strolls by. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/290764-fliers-and-unbound-and-knights-oh-my-casualvscompetitive/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reede Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 That's a good synopsis Fyth. I know what you mean with magic, I used to play, but I was never an amazing deckbuilder so anytime I'd go out on a FNM I tended to have my arse handed to me on a silver platter which is why I haven't really played that in a while. We certainly have a very interesting time ahead of us. On the one level, seeing it take the MTG route will certainly see 40k have a good popularity (if it can mimic MTG which has been going strong for a long time, that's not necessarily a bad thing) but you also do come across those issues of making a game that's already hard to get into, especially on a level playing field, even harder. Still, I suppose the best we can do is wait and see, but considering I already mostly just play against a consistent group of friends, I don't think it'll affect me too much. I've already noticed that I can't walk around my FLGS without running into super cheese lists, so in the end I see it just exacerbating an already crippling problem, But when it comes down to it, we'll never have true balance (only attempts at it) and those that want to will find ways to break the game. So in the end, giving all these options might be the only way to truly balance the game, which is a kind of scary thought. Hmmm thinking about it, I might finally be able to take a Stormraven somewhat legally now? That I like. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/290764-fliers-and-unbound-and-knights-oh-my-casualvscompetitive/#findComment-3678444 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fytharin Posted May 7, 2014 Author Share Posted May 7, 2014 I guess my problem isn’t so much the options, those are all fine and good, but what is an issue is in order to know exactly what my options are, how many rule books am I going to have to buy on top of my codex, rulebook and any supplements my own army might have? Tau for instance have the Farsight Supplement and the Dataslate they have to get in order to know everything specific to their army and that doesn’t even include Stronghold Asault, Escalation, Apoc, Knights and whatever else I missed…… Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/290764-fliers-and-unbound-and-knights-oh-my-casualvscompetitive/#findComment-3678468 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Reede Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 Yea that is the part that's gonna kill us. MTG has it nice in that, you get the card, your rules are right there, whereas we don't quite have that luxury. Even with the model you then need the very pricey rulebook which will certainly hurt. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/290764-fliers-and-unbound-and-knights-oh-my-casualvscompetitive/#findComment-3678481 Share on other sites More sharing options...
skeletoro Posted May 7, 2014 Share Posted May 7, 2014 I played magic very casually in high school for several months and in the end I quit for the simple reason that you don't actually get anything substantive for the money you spend. I mean, at least the 40k rulebooks are pretty and often have some stuff worth reading in them just for pleasure. And obviously, buying a new unit or two to keep up with meta gives you plastic/resin crack. There's something more tangible about it that makes for, all in all, a pretty big disanalogy with magic. Not that the comparison is completely invalid, but there's definitely a difference. Personally I find myself happy to contemplate buying more thunderwolves or whatever to field, say, a wolfpack flanking force in non-apoc games. I don't mind that GW's motivation is profit. There are plenty of things I deride GW for; I make no bones about that, but this isn't really one of them for me personally. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/290764-fliers-and-unbound-and-knights-oh-my-casualvscompetitive/#findComment-3678668 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dahli Llama Posted May 8, 2014 Share Posted May 8, 2014 I guess my problem isn’t so much the options, those are all fine and good, but what is an issue is in order to know exactly what my options are, how many rule books am I going to have to buy on top of my codex, rulebook and any supplements my own army might have? Tau for instance have the Farsight Supplement and the Dataslate they have to get in order to know everything specific to their army and that doesn’t even include Stronghold Asault, Escalation, Apoc, Knights and whatever else I missed…… This has already begun in my opinion. I live a little over an hour from my local hobby shop, so I don't get in there very often. I don't play in their leagues and don't get any casual games in. I love the game and I tend to enjoy competitive play, though, so I attend the tournaments they host. They hadn't hosted one in about a year, but now they've started up again, so I trying to get my head wrapped around all of the varying options available. It is a complete mess. Luckily, I play Space Wolves, so my codex hasn't changed, but trying to figure out what I might be seeing for opponents is ridiculous. Between the supplements, new codices, dataslates, sub-codices, forgeworld, etc. I have no idea what their options are. As a competitive player, I want to know what I might be facing. I also like to understand the rules, so I can know I'm not being cheated. But, I have no interest in buying everything out there anymore. When it was one codex per army at a $25-$30 price, it wasn't terrible. But now $50 per army only gets you part of the story. I have given up on that, and I will bring what I know and hope that my opponents are honest and that I won't have to reference their books constantly. Link to comment https://bolterandchainsword.com/topic/290764-fliers-and-unbound-and-knights-oh-my-casualvscompetitive/#findComment-3679744 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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