Is it time to ban special characters (from matched play)?

[Bryan Blaire]

Is it really likely that Magnus, Morty or Bobby G are personally getting involved in every minor skirmish involving their respective war bands/factions? They should be saved for more important, bigger battles.

Folks do realize that not every game is necessarily a minor skirmish? Even at 500-1000 points, you could simply be playing one part of a much larger battle on the battlefield in an important and hotly contested system where the Primarch has deemed his presence could be the deciding factor toward winning the war on the planet? That is all determined by the narrative that you and your opponent agreed to prior to playing the game. Seriously, all the restrictions on the story involved are 100% on you and your opponent's shoulders.

 

Assuming that the games are actually part of a narrative, and not simply a meaningless pick-up game where neither opponent bothered to talk to the other about the story being played first - and yet you are in your mind so terribly fixated on your personal narrative... and if you are, any game you play where you don't like what happened could always simply be a preprative simulation.

 

If you don't involve your opponent in generating the game and story behind it all, then your creativity is the only restriction on the story.

[Ishagu]

People who complain about Primarchs getting involved in "small scale battles" because it's not narrative are:

 

A: Lacking imagination

B: Flat out wrong

 

First of all, there are literally dozens of examples where a Primarch and a small elite party will engage an enemy.

Secondly, the game you play could simply be a snapshot of a much larger battle happening around. It's not like wars are decided on small spaces and by 3/4 tanks.

 

Also, if my opponent wants to bring Guilliman in a 1k game I'd be very happy. It's a guaranteed loss for him - his army will be tiny and slow. Would probably table him in a few turns :-D

[Captain Idaho]

I have no problems with any characters in games. I just don't like EVERY game having the same characters.

[Plaguecaster]

People who complain about Primarchs getting involved in "small scale battles" because it's not narrative are

 

A: Lacking imagination

B: Flat out wrong

 

First of all, there are literally dozens of examples where a Primarch and a small elite party will engage an enemy.

Secondly, the game you play could simply be a snapshot of a much larger battle happening around. It's not like wars are decided on small spaces and by 3/4 tanks.

 

Also, if my opponent wants to bring Guilliman in a 1k game I'd be very happy. It's a guaranteed loss for him - his army will be tiny and slow. Would probably table him in a few turns :-D

Well that's your opinion and your completely welcome to it even if I don't agree at all with you I just feel taking a LOW at such a low point size can be considered a jerk move especially with how easy faction like Imperial and chaos can easily cram an entire battalion into small point games with soup lists

I really loved the restrictions on the older editions of warhammer fantasy only 1 special character per army, and you could only use certain force org slots the bigger the points you play, a simple no LOWs under 1k would for matched would be very nice like how the rule of 3 comes into play how you can only include more multiples of the same dataslate the bigger pts size you go

 

I agree with captain Idaho, I have yet to encounter a single imperial army in my area that doesn't use Guilliman likewise with Morty and Magnus for their factions.

[Bryan Blaire]

I have no problems with any characters in games. I just don't like EVERY game having the same characters.

I totally agree that there is a lack of internal balance for most of the named characters in the Marine Codexes, but that won't be changed by personal bans on them in games, nor will personal bans on them in games equate to balanced competitions between all Codexes either, because not all the unnamed characters are balanced.

[Captain Idaho]

I guess it's a case of short term or long term focus. Short term, the quickest way to balance the game in Matches Play is make special characters opponent's permission like the olden days. Long term there needs to be new options and rules for characters in armies.

 

It depends on what we're talking about, since new characters and options aren't coming short term.

[Callan]

If your games have a lot of players that want a certain feel, you are free to agree to avoid Lords of War and named characters at your table. I would even suggest that your local group put in composition limits based on the point value of the list - no Lords of War below 2k points, for example. That works. I don't think it's appropriate to do so via game-wide edict, though.

[MysticTemplar]

I guess it's a case of short term or long term focus. Short term, the quickest way to balance the game in Matches Play is make special characters opponent's permission like the olden days. Long term there needs to be new options and rules for characters in armies.

 

It depends on what we're talking about, since new characters and options aren't coming short term.

If I'm following your logic properly, it seems to be 'Characters with Names cause internal balance problems' therefore 'banning Characters with Names make the internal balance problems go away'?

 

Which follows if you accept the premise, but there's a significant amount of evidence that having a Name does not inherently cause you to be a balance problem. Looking at T'au for example - the Commander is generally considered to be an excellent example of an internal balance problem, given the way that it compares to the Crisis Team, but... Is an army of Commanders actually broken on the table top? If the answer is no, than the balance problem actually lies with the Crisis Team rather than the Commander - they're too weak for their cost rather than the Commander being too strong.

 

And the T'au named characters are mostly just sad - and the two Commanders with Names in the book are now significantly more difficult to use, because they compete directly with Coldstar Commanders for the one per detachment slot.

 

Then, if you have factions that rely on a Character with a Name to be the cornerstone of their competitive viability, then the internal balance problem is more than likely because the things that should be competing for that slot fail to provide a meaningful choice. While hammering the nail down is the 'easy solution', it also causes the painting that was hanging off of it to fall off of the wall. It makes more sense to try to raise everyone else up to a more equal level.

 

As a result, the confluence of Internal and External together means that there really isn't a short term solution. Especially not a simple one. A long term solution would be to bring the weak entries up to a more reasonable level, though this is tricky at best, of course.

 

Edit: As an aside, why do people keep bringing up 'But X wouldn't fight a battle of that level!'? That's a narrative reason, and it's best left to the game mode intended for it.

[Beta galactosidase]

I guess it's a case of short term or long term focus. Short term, the quickest way to balance the game in Matches Play is make special characters opponent's permission like the olden days. Long term there needs to be new options and rules for characters in armies.

 

It depends on what we're talking about, since new characters and options aren't coming short term.

Really Idaho, special characters are opponent’s permission. Maybe in the short term the quickest way to balance Matched Play is to make land speeders opponents’ permission, or maybe units that end in “R.”

 

In the olden days of third edition, a special character was a captain with powerfist whose invulnerable was 3+ instead of 4+, or a chaplain whose hammer counted as a chapter standard. That age of opponents position had nothing to do with balance, and people still never allowed SCs.

[Khornestar]

In response to OP, no, I definitely don’t think so. Not in any official context, anyway. If tourneys want to impose House rules, more power to them.

[Withershadow]

No, let's not regress to the 90s.

[battle captain corpus]

Banning Special Characters.....nope nope nope...that's just not fun for me!

 

BCC

[Evil Eye]

I know I'm kinda repeating myself here, but I get the impression a large part of the problem is trying to force a casual/friendly game to work in a competitive tournament setting. I'm personally of the opinion that "competitive" 40K is to regular 40K what the Hawker Nimrod is to the De Havilland Comet- A great vehicle ruined by being shoehorned into a role it was never intended for and being stuffed with a bunch of technical baggage that sends the whole thing out of kilter and occasionally makes it crash.

 

I reckon if you honestly wanted to make 40K tourney friendly you'd have to write a completely separate set of rules, standardize/homogenize a whole lot of units and wargear and generally suck the life out of the game. Trying to get "regular" 40K to work in a tournament setting is a recipe for disaster, with everyone taking the super-powerful Lords of War that are only intended for climactic battles at the zenith of a campaign. Trying to make everyone play "competitive" 40K would ruin the experience for a whole lot of hobbyists as their Inferno Bolters and Talon of Horus are replaced with "Anti armour rifle" and "Level 3 close combat weapon".

[Captain Idaho]

It's not actually a ban to have opponents permission. If your opponent is a casual gamer why wouldn't they say yes. If it's a tournament it's much more balanced not having said characters.

 

I find it amusing when people say "opponents will say no". Well if the opponent is saying no then there's obviously a problem eh? Either you're playing something cheesey and it won't be fun, or your friends aren't reasonable.

 

It illustrates the problem.

[Claws and Effect]

On the other hand, if your enemy suspects some high toughness behemoth and is ready with enough lascannons, your big shiny thing dies turn one or two.

 

Doesn't that suggest that they actually ARE balanced?

 

If your opponent is prepared for them they aren't that tough, right?

 

If I go to a tournament I expect to come up against such units and build my list accordingly.

[Race Bannon]

No, let's not regress to the 90s.

Agreed. Back to the 80s :woot:

 

To the OP, I hate to say it but no restrictions on Matched Play beyond the rule book. That style of play is meant for a reasonably thriving group of players who enjoy it.

[Panzer]

It's not actually a ban to have opponents permission. If your opponent is a casual gamer why wouldn't they say yes. If it's a tournament it's much more balanced not having said characters.

I find it amusing when people say "opponents will say no". Well if the opponent is saying no then there's obviously a problem eh? Either you're playing something cheesey and it won't be fun, or your friends aren't reasonable.

It illustrates the problem.

I actually have to disagree here. I come from fantasy where special character were by opponents permission and the general answer was “no“ because that's how the game is played, or it ended with the opponent taking the most broken special character he can just because.

[Race Bannon]

Was that codified or local rule?

[MysticTemplar]

It's not actually a ban to have opponents permission. If your opponent is a casual gamer why wouldn't they say yes. If it's a tournament it's much more balanced not having said characters.

 

I find it amusing when people say "opponents will say no". Well if the opponent is saying no then there's obviously a problem eh? Either you're playing something cheesey and it won't be fun, or your friends aren't reasonable.

 

It illustrates the problem.

I'm not sure there's really an evidence that this does improve External Balance? Looking at the last three major tournaments I can find lists for on the Blood of Kittens site, I find that Characters with Names appear in roughly half of them.

(Two Yvraines, one Mephiston, one Kaldor Draigo, and a list with Epidemius, the Bilepiper and Ahriman. Lists without characters were 2 Necron Lists, one T'au list, and an Imperial Guard list that had a unit of Seraphim as an Auxilary support choice.)

 

After all, being a Character with a Name is not required for something to be Cheese, as 7th edition Riptides, and 6th edition Wave Serpents prove, for example.

 

Point being, there isn't really any reason to single out Named Characters as a whole - having a Name doesn't make a unit more inherently problematic than being a Heavy Support choice does, after all.

[Panzer]

Was that codified or local rule?

 

If I remember correctly it was an unwritten rule but it was like that wherever I went at that time (so not just strictly "local").

Everybody simply ignored all the special characters by default (to be fair there were some that could easily solo a whole army ... Magnus&Co are a joke in comparison) and on the rare occasion someone asked whether they could use a special character the answer was usually a "no" and on the even more rare occasion the answer was a "yes" it was because the opponent had a rather broken special character he could use himself so it ended in a rather unfun game anyway.

[taikishi]

 

No, let's not regress to the 90s.

Agreed. Back to the 80s

 

To the OP, I hate to say it but no restrictions on Matched Play beyond the rule book. That style of play is meant for a reasonably thriving group of players who enjoy it.

 

 

I'd love to take that so far as to include Rule of Three, though SOME units probably do need to be restricted; it's just the blanket "no more than X of anything non-troops/non-DT" that I disagree with.

[taikishi]

Was that codified or local rule?

 

All of the special characters in 3rd edition required both players to agree on the use of special characters -- which essentially banned them in tournament play. Some, like Commander Dante or Eldrad also required a minimum points value of the army (usually over 2,000 points at a time when 1,500 was standard) in addition to opponent's permission.

[Iron Father Ferrum]

I never played a 3rd Edition tourney game at less than 2000 points, so your definition of standard is incorrect.

[taikishi]

Guess I imagined GamesDay tournaments being 1500 points, then ;p

[ERJAK]

 

 

 

 

Primarchs were a mistake. And removing the old restrictions were the start of that mistake.

Sales, hype and hobby growth disagree with that.

 

Yes, the argumentum ad populum. Which also tells us that Justin Bieber is a musical genius on par with the great masters.

 

The mere fact that people lap it up doesn't mean it's good. Remember the old days when everyone was a smoker?

 

While the comment about popularity not necessarily being the best barometer of quality is true, I'm not sure what you're angling at here?

 

You say that Primarchs were a mistake, but from what angle? From Games Workshop's point of view, they seem to have to worked out fairly well, or I don't think they'd keep creating them. From a game balance point of view, they don't seem any more inherently problematic than a number of smaller things - sure, Guiliman is powerful, but there does seem to be empirical proof that it is possible to do well with Ultramarines (not just Codex: Space Marines, but Ultramarines specifically) without bringing him, so he doesn't seem to actually be mandatory, so it isn't necessarily forcing army composition.

 

But regardless, I still don't see how the idea of "opponent's permission" makes any sense in the more competitively aimed game type.

 

Game balance is one. The feel of the game is the second. This is a game of armies fighting it out, not who has the bigger stick (which the whole Lords of War really got going). We have people getting into the game because they see these massive and powerful models, and we end up with people trying their best to get a one into the smallest game they can. When you can't show up to a game without having to wonder if you'll have to content with a Primarch, it starts sucking the fun out of it. Then there is the lore, wherein the return of the Primarch are supposed to be the beginning of the end.

 

In short, I think GW including Primarchs in 40k was a mistake, and big one too, on several levels.

 

This is only relevant if the lord of war is incorrectly priced, which imo most are too expensive, not the other way around. 

 

It's not actually a ban to have opponents permission. If your opponent is a casual gamer why wouldn't they say yes. If it's a tournament it's much more balanced not having said characters.

 

I find it amusing when people say "opponents will say no". Well if the opponent is saying no then there's obviously a problem eh? Either you're playing something cheesey and it won't be fun, or your friends aren't reasonable.

 

It illustrates the problem.

The bigger issue is, what do you do if your opponent says no? If I bring double battalion SoB and my opponent says no to Celestine and Uriah Jacobus, I have to drop out of the tournament because there is no possible way I can replace her in that list simply due to SoB only having 1 generic HQ. I

 

If the characters are balanced, the tournament is MORE balanced not less due to how expensive most are. Magnus and Mortarion are perfectly reasonable for their cost(to the point where they don't make the cut a lot of the time), Guillamen at 400pts only really sees play due to how bad the rest of the space marine book is, Celestine is good but only really sees play in SoB armies anymore, and is 250pts for a for a model that's only real claim to fame is being fast and survivable. Every other special character is either there for some unique buff they offer or TERRIBLE.

 

If you're still struggling against these characters at this point it's a problem with YOU not a problem with THEM.

 

And 'with your opponents permission' is ALREADY in play at tournaments and the answer is assumed to be YES. If you go to a tournament you are signing a social contract that says 'I agree to go up against the most broken bullgak that this game has to offer with no limitations beyond what is rules legal.'

 

Side bar: I find it amusing that you think in a competitive event, where the goal is to win, people wouldn't just say no across the board to give themselves the best possible chance. Saying no to special characters becomes a strategy at that point that you can build your list around. This whole line of thought is hopelessly naive.