GW endorsing the loyal 32?

[Lord Marshal]

Baneblades and Marcharius' not Paladins and Castellans ok. Praise the Emperor.

[killersquid]

I liked the battle report, diversity is always good! Also, the fellows form CDN, who did the report wrote about their experience which I also enjoyed reading about. https://www.caledoniandeathwatchnetwork.co.uk/?p=1527&fbclid=IwAR3Jf8kx7iR50SLNkdY0H8Ar4CmAnzzSBF3vUhvLZDUYYx3HZCcZ5Cn2MsM

 

GW supports Open, Narrative and Matched play, I'm happy seeing content for all three. Everyone enjoys the hobby in their own way.

[Dracos]

I like the 32 because they remind me of my Demonhunter Army from 3rd edition. Fond memories of playing with Guard and Grey Knights and Inquisitor teams all in the same army :)

 

What I don’t like is the lack of true scale Guard models available, so I won’t be rebuilding any of my old fun style armies until they bring back Elysians or resculpt one of the regiments that doesn’t look like it fought in WWI.

[Scribe]

 

 

I'm more a modeler than a player and all of my armies are fluff-based rather than WAAC lists. With that said here's an honest question:

 

Why do we have CP at all?

Because that's the ruleset GW came up with for this edition. Plain and simple.

True, but I think this is still a valid question. CPs and Stratagems aren't really integral parts of the game - they're an almost entirely independent system of buffs and special rules that live outside of the core rules, but they're universally recognized as the heart of nearly all of 8th's biggest balance problems. Given that, I think it's easy to see that they're a net negative to a lot of the game's play experience. I do wonder if 40K wouldn't be a better game if people just opted out of CPs/Strats as a house rule. Not like it'd be particularly difficult or alien. It's basically the 40K we all played for ages before 8th, after all.

 

 

Yep. I mean its nice of GW to explore these other options, but the 'model' was at its best in 5th. Clean, streamlined rules. All this extra stuff after has been where things have broken, and time has been added to the game experience, without really adding much of anything to the experience of the game.

[Slasher956]

from a sales point of view - why wouldnt they?  thats 3 boxes of infantry + a command box AT LEAST.

 

from a competivite gaming point of view - its valid in the rules and if you know about it you can at least think about how would you go against it.  WD articles like this help people learn the tactical side of the game...

 

from a relaxed gamer point of view - its not my cup of tea... but if I'm playing a pick up game with some one I dont know I'll give them a clue to my list* - and expect the same, before agreeing to play

* eg, I've got an infantry heavy sisters army with no allies OR I have a rather nasty ulthew army with a couple of reaper units

[Dosjetka]

=][= Folks need to cool their jets and stop getting all personal about this. Keep it civil. =][=

[Leif Bearclaw]

 

 

It is. The issue with 40k and the 'Army of the Imperium' idea is one of scale. Yes the various branches of the Imperium's armed forces do work in concert, but not commonly (note commonly, it will happen, but rarely) at the sub-company level engagements that are the regular 40k game. A 'Marine-Guard combined operation' will be something like the Red Scorpion's forlorn hope deployment at Vraks, where a Hundred-odd Marines are the Vanguard/Shock Troops, get the foothold the Guard have failed to, and are supported/relieved by a couple of Titans and Thousands of Guardsmen. That's a far cry from the '30 Guardsmen and 30 Marines team up for the same firefight' set up we have in current 40k.

I agree to a certain extent but singling out the Imperium for this scale problem is not fair. Chaos is equally to blame, as is Eldar to a slightly lesser extent. How many battles with 10 - 20 marines and a load of cultists are realistically going to see several daemon princes turn up? Hardly any but what do you see time and again in chaos lists? How many skirmishes would Guilliman/Magnus/mortarion really be involved in against a handful of troops? Now I know they’re not necessarily allies as they’re often in the same codex but if we are talking scale, I don’t see a difference between 30 guardsmen plus 30 marines fighting together regularly and a horde of cultists who’ve managed to bring along 3 daemon princes with them.

 

The scale and allies/appropriate units issue is not an issue with the Imperium, it’s an issue with the game in general. I agree it would be nice to address it but without adding in a lot more restrictions to army building I don’t see how you can

 

 

Well personally, I'd add a lot more restrictions to army building . Yes the 'scale' issue is an endemic one to 40k, I will however defend the idea that Imperial allies deserves singling out somewhat, because people try to justify it with fluff arguments that ignore components of the fluff they're citing. 3 Daemon Prince lists, Primarch spam and the like are pretty universally accepted as 'game contrivances' and, in my experience, they get complained about/accepted as such. Nobody seriously claims that Gulliman is actually present for every skirmish, whereas 40k-scale Imperial soup is defended as perfectly fine 'because that's how the Imperium tends to fight'. But that stance isn't really substantiated (at the scale of a 40k game) by the fluff GW has put out over the years.

[Panzer]

The thing with fluff is, you can justify basically anything for one-off games. It becomes harder to justify some things if you play campaigns or narrative games where such combinations or named characters aren't part of the narrative. But for individual matched play games you can justify basically everything.

[Scribe]

Comical thread.

 

If you want to enforce army comp by 'fluff' you'll die before you get universal agreement on what the fluff even is. Trust me, there are many many many people who dont even know this games lore.

 

People have the right to play how they want if its within the rules. Dont like it? Find someone who thinks like you do, or be an adult (lol at kids with $2000 armies...sure) and talk it out.

 

My game group had the whole range, from hyper comp, to pure casual, to what I like to call 'casual complainer' the guy who hates dice, hates the game, hates to lose, but blames anyone but themselves for that loss.

 

I still was able to play with and against them all because I knew what to expect, or PLANNED based on who I was expecting to play.

 

Blaming GW is just saying 'everyone should have to play by my rules'.

[MARK0SIAN]

 

 

 

It is. The issue with 40k and the 'Army of the Imperium' idea is one of scale. Yes the various branches of the Imperium's armed forces do work in concert, but not commonly (note commonly, it will happen, but rarely) at the sub-company level engagements that are the regular 40k game. A 'Marine-Guard combined operation' will be something like the Red Scorpion's forlorn hope deployment at Vraks, where a Hundred-odd Marines are the Vanguard/Shock Troops, get the foothold the Guard have failed to, and are supported/relieved by a couple of Titans and Thousands of Guardsmen. That's a far cry from the '30 Guardsmen and 30 Marines team up for the same firefight' set up we have in current 40k.

I agree to a certain extent but singling out the Imperium for this scale problem is not fair. Chaos is equally to blame, as is Eldar to a slightly lesser extent. How many battles with 10 - 20 marines and a load of cultists are realistically going to see several daemon princes turn up? Hardly any but what do you see time and again in chaos lists? How many skirmishes would Guilliman/Magnus/mortarion really be involved in against a handful of troops? Now I know they’re not necessarily allies as they’re often in the same codex but if we are talking scale, I don’t see a difference between 30 guardsmen plus 30 marines fighting together regularly and a horde of cultists who’ve managed to bring along 3 daemon princes with them.

 

The scale and allies/appropriate units issue is not an issue with the Imperium, it’s an issue with the game in general. I agree it would be nice to address it but without adding in a lot more restrictions to army building I don’t see how you can

Well personally, I'd add a lot more restrictions to army building . Yes the 'scale' issue is an endemic one to 40k, I will however defend the idea that Imperial allies deserves singling out somewhat, because people try to justify it with fluff arguments that ignore components of the fluff they're citing. 3 Daemon Prince lists, Primarch spam and the like are pretty universally accepted as 'game contrivances' and, in my experience, they get complained about/accepted as such. Nobody seriously claims that Gulliman is actually present for every skirmish, whereas 40k-scale Imperial soup is defended as perfectly fine 'because that's how the Imperium tends to fight'. But that stance isn't really substantiated (at the scale of a 40k game) by the fluff GW has put out over the years.

Fair enough, well put! Also I’m with you in that I’d be happy to see more restrictions on army building but I feel that will be a minority opinion and not one GW is likely to take up.

[tylerw]

The thing that stood out the most for me was that the 2 guys didn't use their own models.

 

Without horribly jumping to conclusions about either player one of the things I have noticed with competitive gamers is that they don't invest as much time into building and painting their armies.

 

This is probably due to keeping up with the meta but I find people that play fluffy lists tend to be more invested in the painting and modelling side of things.

 

The point I'm making is it seems odd that White Dwarf would invite two apparently well known, regular, tournament players but didn't in any way showcase their armies in the magazine.

 

I suppose the battle report was purely to show off how tournament players play but personally that's not "my version" of 40K and I'd rather see less competitive gamers who get to show off their own models featured in the pages of WD.

 

It also worries me that these types of ultra competitive players are now being used as official play testers, and that the competitive meta seems to be influencing the FAQs.

 

But as has been said, everybody has different ways to play  and although this isn't my vision of 40K gaming I'm glad it got some page time.

 

Competitive players being playtesters can sound worrisome, but as long as you have someone in charge with a clear vision of how much or how little OP things they want in the game, they're a huge boon.

 

Magic The Gathering had problems, for a long time, with releasing VERY broken cards - things that had to be emergency banned immediately. Once they started pulling in pros to work at Wizards, this problem mostly was cleared up. Now there's still the occasional problem card, but they're more comparable to things like the Loyal 32 and Knights. What I'm saying is if you get in very competitive players who play a lot of armies and try to break things, they're going to find some or all of those things before they're released. Also, if you have people who play by competitive rules, they're going to play with current top performers and see if something is just very good and effective, or too good/effective and needs to be nerfed, changed, etc.

 

It doesn't mean that what GW will produce pushes everyone to a more competitive place, it means that there will probably be less ridiculous stuff (bad ridiculous, not "it's ridiculous that these huge superhumans have rocketpacks, drop pods, or ride monster wolves ridiculous) and more factions will be viable. That assumes that the people who make the final decisions actually take this feedback, but since they appear to be reaching out more and more to competitive players, I think it's safe to hope that they will.

[tylerw]

The only thing that is 'incredibly stupid' is defending a style of game that actively causes problems for people to find new games or participate in their community. Look no further than the neckbeards who on people who want to build stuff that isn't optimized for points or the incessant 'how to make Primaris competitive' threads. All it takes is one to start running a hyper-competitive list and people can't win at their local store without having to cater their armies to something that can drop a knight in a turn. Matched play should not be hyper-competitive by default and no one should be afraid to walk into their store and find a game that's fun.

 

 

Edit: And defending this as 'people who enjoy the hobby differently than you' fundamentally misses that point that these people are exploiting the game, not playing.

 

Exploiting a game's rules or mechanics is part of what makes some people tick. This is only bad if a company doesn't work on their rules. Some people really like playing MTG in a way that's basically trying to break it with a combo deck, or just making a really crazy thing happen, sort of like when people would do stuff like null deploy that obviously probably weren't intended, but can result in really impressive results. 

People who like to exploit things will be a problem in any game whose rules team is slow to respond and hides their heads in the sand, which is what GW did for a long time. It looks like things might be getting better now.

 

Featuring competitive play and bring in competitive players will (if GW wants to) make this situation better, not worse. Ideally, GW would have 4-5 of these folks on staff or at least playing in their narrative/pickup games, so they'd experience firsthand how frustrating it can be to have someone play soup army X, or spam mortal wounds Y, that sort of thing, and decide if it's something they want their customers to play with/against, or if that experience is more frustrating than it should be for a game.

[Scribe]

As a fellow Magic player, I appreciate that you are bringing that to the discussion as its very on point.

 

Can you play Kitchen Table or Dual Decks? Sure can, thats your 'narrative' play.

 

Can you play competitive GP tournament style? Yep, and thats your Match Play 'try hard' mode.

 

If you do not bring both camps into your game development, you lose out on valuable knowledge.

[MARK0SIAN]

As a fellow Magic player, I appreciate that you are bringing that to the discussion as its very on point.

 

Can you play Kitchen Table or Dual Decks? Sure can, thats your 'narrative' play.

 

Can you play competitive GP tournament style? Yep, and thats your Match Play 'try hard' mode.

 

If you do not bring both camps into your game development, you lose out on valuable knowledge.

I agree with your point but one thing I want to say in a more general sense is how people seem to view matched play:

 

Matched play does NOT equal tournament play/try hard

 

It is called matched play, as in the sides are equally matched against each other unlike power levels/open play/narrative.

 

We need to stop thinking of and referring to matched play as this tournament style, hyper competitive mode. It just so happens to be the version that tournaments use. Matched play has been the normal way to play for years.

 

Matched play is there for all the people who want their games to be as fair and as balanced as possible. That doesn’t mean it’s the tournament or competitive mode.

[Marshal Rohr]

 

As a fellow Magic player, I appreciate that you are bringing that to the discussion as its very on point.

 

Can you play Kitchen Table or Dual Decks? Sure can, thats your 'narrative' play.

 

Can you play competitive GP tournament style? Yep, and thats your Match Play 'try hard' mode.

 

If you do not bring both camps into your game development, you lose out on valuable knowledge.

I agree with your point but one thing I want to say in a more general sense is how people seem to view matched play:

 

Matched play does NOT equal tournament play/try hard

 

It is called matched play, as in the sides are equally matched against each other unlike power levels/open play/narrative.

 

We need to stop thinking of and referring to matched play as this tournament style, hyper competitive mode. It just so happens to be the version that tournaments use. Matched play has been the normal way to play for years.

 

Matched play is there for all the people who want their games to be as fair and as balanced as possible. That doesn’t mean it’s the tournament or competitive mode.

 

 

 

Dude, thank you! The game needs a 'competitive mode'. As Scribe so rightly point out, bringing in hard core metagamers to test out rules and try to break things is just part of the playtesting/bug fixing process of any entertainment system. They should take the lessons learned and limit them in open/narrative/matched and then reserve a whole new style of game just for competitive. Something like no Strats/CP in matched play, or CP don't transfer in matched play but do in Competitive Play would literally solve all my problems with this, because I can walk into a store and say 'Matched or Competitive' and I know that even the guy with three knights wont be able to table me if we are doing matched. I'm a narrative gamer at heart, but its hard to set up narrative play games in 8th. It requires social media, texting, etc as well as coming to agreement on house rules, and that is fine when I know the person, but I wanna be able to drive to Columbia, SC and play a game at the Forrest Hills store without worrying about losing in three turns. 

[Scribe]

The problem is matched play still requires that social contract of 'what are you looking to get out of the game.' 

 

I agree its not 100% on point, but the analogy had to reach. :p

 

'Competitive' should certainly be a game mode, or rules set, on top of Matched, Narrative, Open.

[Lexington]

The problem with trying to tool the system to competitive balance is that it gets in the way of the marketing effort that’s, like, half of the rules’ purpose in the first place.

[Kinstryfe]

I'm not sure I can imagine a "competitive" game mode that would be particularly different than matched play. The biggest difference is that competitive is matched play taken to the most effective chance of winning. In a lot of ways it's even more restrictive than matched play. I'm not sure how you could make matched play disallow all of those things unless it was made significantly *more* restrictive than competitive play and they just banned all allies altogether.

[Panzer]

To be fair there are a bunch of 'rules' that are supposed to be for tournaments only. It's just that many people think "what's good enough for tournaments is good enough for us as well" ... which kiiinda makes sense since the tournament rules would just be a stricter form of matched play to make things 'even more fair' but doesn't really work out in the end I'd say. Rule of 3 would be a great example for something that's intended to be used only in tournaments and luckily gets completely ignored by my group since it restricts themed lists too much for no real reason aside of reigning in a few cases of spam.

[MARK0SIAN]

To be fair there are a bunch of 'rules' that are supposed to be for tournaments only. It's just that many people think "what's good enough for tournaments is good enough for us as well" ... which kiiinda makes sense since the tournament rules would just be a stricter form of matched play to make things 'even more fair' but doesn't really work out in the end I'd say. Rule of 3 would be a great example for something that's intended to be used only in tournaments and luckily gets completely ignored by my group since it restricts themed lists too much for no real reason aside of reigning in a few cases of spam.

Yeah, I’ve always felt rule of 3 was quite a heavy handed approach to a problem that could’ve been solved on a unit by unit basis by restricting only the stuff that’s a problem if spammed, like they did with the flyrants.

 

And you’re right, people refer to a lot of tournament guidelines as if they’re rules when they’re simply guides for organised events.

[RobWrath]

Is it worth making the point that although we've singled out the Loyal 32 as the offender here, that wasn't the army that won the battle?

[sairence]

Is it worth making the point that although we've singled out the Loyal 32 as the offender here, that wasn't the army that won the battle?

That made me chuckle, in the context of the thread. I don't have WD so wasn't aware of that. What did the other guy run?

[RobWrath]

 

Is it worth making the point that although we've singled out the Loyal 32 as the offender here, that wasn't the army that won the battle?

That made me chuckle, in the context of the thread. I don't have WD so wasn't aware of that. What did the other guy run?

 

 

Mixed Eldar soup with loads and loads of flyers and jetbikes.

 

He took down a knight on T1 and then just made sure he was on most of the objectives.

[Progenitor]

And that just spoiled the batrep for me as I didn't know the result and haven't had time to sit down to read my WD yet :P 

 

I'm all for these kinds of reports. My group play exclusively matched play, but not tournament level. We just take what we like and seems fun. While I am in part guided by what seems to be good, pretty sure the Stormsurge that features in my lists isn't exactly tournament optimised (I have no Riptides either). Matched play, as has been stated, just means that we all work to a common standard and can have a balanced game. I have 0 interest in narrative or open 40k, but think that'd be great in Kill Team. I'd much rather GW be exposed to the abusive tournament meta because maybe then they can at least see how abusive it can be and then maybe choose to rebalance the game to remove some of the egregious things that are done with the rules. 

 

While it won't necessarily affect my playgroup, it can only be good for the game in the long run. 

[Xenith]

 

Pete Foley and others have said on stream in the past that they like mixed Imperium armies, as it is exactly how they tend to fight and how they managed to conquer the galaxy in the first place.

 

Again, that's how the fight in the narrative...which should belong in narrative games.