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Post by Dr Carnivean on Mar 26, 2014 19:15:43 GMT -5
Well somebody needs to represent the "socially introverted ... hardcore hobbyists who spend their time buying and painting models, and game only occasionally" crowd, so I guess it's my turn to chime in Yeah it sucks collecting and painting an army to find it plays like warm crap on the tabletop. And while I agree some of it can be due to not knowing what is good and what isn't, or taking 'stuff that looks cool' which was on my list of army-building mistakes in my Wall of Text article, a lot of the problem - not addressed really in the article - is codex creep and new editions of the game coming out every couple years. My vehicle heavy list was probably a solid competitive list 2 years ago when I first designed it and started buying stuff for it and began doing the conversion work. 6th edition and the newer codexes pretty much killed that. When your army doesn't have a shelf life of more than two years, I think there's something wrong. Forget new players and casual gamers, Games Workshop's current business model doesn't even appeal to anyone without the disposable income to buy an entire new army every eight months for the tournament circuit. GTs can be a fun way to game if you're good at them, and can always have the best army to use in them. Otherwise not so much, at least not as your whole gaming experience. I mean, it's still fun for me to go and get my teeth knocked in just for the excitement and coolness of the GT like I did last month, but if that represented my entire gaming experience I would have been out of the hobby long ago. As others have mentioned, a little too much spin on the issue of Games Workshop's rules. If this were a fledgling indy game company run out of someone's basement or a small time company like Steve Jackson, you could forgive some badly written stuff, but my feeling has always been that if you're getting paid to write game rules(and especially if you're charging as much money as GW charges for them) then you'd better have some quality control going on. Overall though, I really enjoyed the article, and liked that he mentioned Malifaux as a game for all those in between fluffy and hardcore competitive, because I'm totally in love with that game system. I think his best points are about social gaming clubs being a great way to play 40K. I can't tell you how much I miss my regular Monday and Friday nights at Hobbytown with you guys. Bob, don't get too offended by people being down on your lists on those sites - it wouldn't be the internet if people didn't piss on everything I've always felt that the only thing you have the right to expect from your opponent going in is a legible army list, a working knowledge of the rules, and a friendly demeanor. Unless it's stated or agreed upon beforehand, as in 'this is a beginner tournament for new players so no ridiculousness' or 'hey I want to play around with something for our game tomorrow night, do you think you could try not to bring something that will beat my face in?' And then the other person has the option to say 'yeah, it might be nice to bring out some of my stuff that's totally crap in this codex now' or 'sorry, but I really want to work on this tournament list I've got going' or 'I don't dumb it down for nobody; prepare to be broken in two' or 'Machete don't text'.
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sionnach19
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Post by sionnach19 on Mar 26, 2014 21:55:33 GMT -5
I'm with Bob, the game is prevented from being a casual "non-competitive" beer and pretzels game by the fact the imbalances are so profound. Folks who never turn on a computer can accidentally create really brutal combinations that will destroy their friends (Joe's CSM with his prized helldrakes led by Daemonprince Gutsmear will annihilate his buddy Kyle's Space Wolf 4th Company, which has no sky fire and is mostly on foot).
Jason touched again on the point that I think is so poignant -- the game is too expensive for many folks to update their army every year to the new hotness that will enable them to compete. The fact that the power balance fluctuates so dramatically, so quickly, makes being a "collector" of a faction or two impossible if you want to try to seriously compete. I have no qualms about playing in high-level tournaments against the toughest competition in the country against the meanest lists imaginable: that can be a total blast and a very fun experience, and it is for many people. That level of competitive 40k isn't necessarily the problem. The problem (at least in my mind) is that people who aren't on the edge of the curve with the strongest armies that month are at a distinct disadvantage. The folks who are playing at that top level, with the strongest lists, are the ones largely dictating what the 40k community looks like.
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Post by breng77 on Mar 27, 2014 8:34:01 GMT -5
Well somebody needs to represent the "socially introverted ... hardcore hobbyists who spend their time buying and painting models, and game only occasionally" crowd, so I guess it's my turn to chime in Yeah it sucks collecting and painting an army to find it plays like warm crap on the tabletop. And while I agree some of it can be due to not knowing what is good and what isn't, or taking 'stuff that looks cool' which was on my list of army-building mistakes in my Wall of Text article, a lot of the problem - not addressed really in the article - is codex creep and new editions of the game coming out every couple years. My vehicle heavy list was probably a solid competitive list 2 years ago when I first designed it and started buying stuff for it and began doing the conversion work. 6th edition and the newer codexes pretty much killed that. When your army doesn't have a shelf life of more than two years, I think there's something wrong. Forget new players and casual gamers, Games Workshop's current business model doesn't even appeal to anyone without the disposable income to buy an entire new army every eight months for the tournament circuit. Totally Agree. It also sucks casually to pick models you want to play and paint, only to find you stomp everyone and then they don't want to play against your army. Like Bob said, part of me really is tempted to make a Gundam Wing Themed army out of Tau Riptides or Imperial Knights (or a mix of those and Wraithknights or something), and it could be a cool army...that I made totally as a modeling thing...but are casual guys really going to want to play against it regularly? Well if not I just spent ~$700 or so on a bunch of models that I cannot use regularly...and if I want to play (by handicapping myself) I need to go buy another army (which I did at one point in 5th ed scoring a bunch of necrons on Ebay when they were terrible just to play against less competitive friends). Take Bobby for instance and his cool squid Heldrake....awesome model...not going to be fun for a lot of casual games. Which really sucks. Also from having been ringer enough times, I find that even when I try to make a "less" hardcore list I still murder people...to try to really tone it down I would literally need to knowingly take bad units...which I don't even own.
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Post by Dr Carnivean on Mar 27, 2014 16:56:05 GMT -5
Totally Agree. It also sucks casually to pick models you want to play and paint, only to find you stomp everyone and then they don't want to play against your army. That's never been an issue for me, except for the daemons in 7th ed fantasy, when I put together an army of all the daemon stuff I had bought here and there over the years and ended up with an army that plowed through everything. I think that must have been a 'broken clock' phenomenon, since none of the cool looking stuff I've ever bought for any of the other armies I've ever played worked very well for me.
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captainecho
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Post by captainecho on Mar 27, 2014 20:46:46 GMT -5
Yeah Bob, as for Warmachine's broken combos, I'm glad that A. you have the option to come with a sideboard, and B. the lower model count means less painting time. Privateer press's models do cost a pretty penny though. Still, when I bought my Carnivean model, I was able to magnetize everything so it can be 3 things. it is harder to do that with some of the bigger 40k kits. and where WSYIWYG that can be an awful lot of money for nothing.
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sionnach19
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Post by sionnach19 on Mar 28, 2014 1:07:47 GMT -5
Yeah Bob, as for Warmachine's broken combos, I'm glad that A. you have the option to come with a sideboard, and B. the lower model count means less painting time. Privateer press's models do cost a pretty penny though. Still, when I bought my Carnivean model, I was able to magnetize everything so it can be 3 things. it is harder to do that with some of the bigger 40k kits. and where WSYIWYG that can be an awful lot of money for nothing. There are some absurd, completely anti-fun combinations in WM/H. But the thing I like about the game is that with caster-kill as a win condition, you're never totally "out" of the game. There's always something you can do, even if it's a one-in-a-million shot to try and kill the enemy caster and win. That makes getting stomped more bearable, in my mind. The lower model count/faster games help a lot too. 40k games suck when they turn into two hour pull-your-models-off-the-table-while-I-slaughter-them-all events that neither player can help -- sometimes you can tell bottom of turn 1 (or hell, when you swap army lists) that things won't end well, and get stuck going through the motions with nothing to do but watch the month's hot-new-deathstar chew through your whole army. I've been on both ends of that, and it's not really fun either way. I like that in WM/H there's almost always a chance to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat (on the flip side, it's easier to "end" games by letting your warcaster be killed). One of the frustrations folks have voiced before about WM/H is how quickly the game changes -- new pieces constantly being introduced, models for all factions each book release, so many important combos and abilities to memorize and be aware of. People can feel there's so much to keep up with, if you don't comb the forums and learn all these abilities/combinations you'll be blindsided by some crazy synergy and lose instantly. Within the past year, the frenzied pace of GW releases has brought about the same problems for 40k. I still keep up with rumors and boards and such, but with so many supplements and dataslates it's become really difficult to keep track of all the new things added to the game and how they work. I feel woefully under-prepared to go into a 40k event this weekend, because I don't know what all the recent rules changes mean for the game. Hell, I'm still getting Tyranid rules wrong and that's the only book that I've bought so far! As far as cost goes, they're about equivalent once you start playing seriously (as long as you have disposable income, you'll spend it on models -- doesn't matter the company!). But, you can get a full, functional WM/H army for much cheaper than a comparable 40k one; and the initial buy in is much lower which it makes it more appealing to new players (40k can't compete with the low, efficient buy in of the PP battlebox... one of the advantages of the skirmish system). I also like in WM/H that you can pick up a new "side" faction cheaply and relatively easily (the Tyranid list I would love to play costs close to 1000 dollars retail, so maybe $800 if I go online... eBay vendors sell complete, 50 point tournament lists for WM/H that are under $200). Much easier to bounce around factions/lists, with the lower model count. I think the game also caters better to collectors, as I don't have to worry about my whole force being shaken up every 4-6 years and my favorite models being crap, while old things I never bought are suddenly made awesome (and GW inexplicably makes the coolest new model suck? damn haruspex). I'm comfortable investing in a bunch of Khador stuff as it's relatively stable. Also, the way the warcaster system works you can generally find a way to make almost any model you want work even if it's subpar. Nothing I do will ever make a Haruspex worth taking over another codex choice. But, running a crappy unit with a solo to buff their speed and with a caster who fixes their bad accuracy makes them good enough to hit the table even if they are subpar. I dunno why I'm preaching about WM/H WM/H has it's issues, but I think the game (and the company) are doing some awesome stuff (if anything, the playerbase is what really holds it back). I really like the way Bob puts it though -- different folks have different itches. Different games scratch different itches. The models, or the character driven nature, or the skirmish size may put people off from Warmachine and that's cool. Flames looks awesome, but I'm just not into it -- doesn't mean the game is bad, just doesn't scratch an itch. 40k was once able to scratch so many itches -- competitive gamers, hobby enthusiasts, fluff nuts, giant mega battle people or tiny Kill Team skirmish folks. I think folks are so disgruntled and frustrated because they've invested so much (time, money, energy) into the hobby, and it seems to really have fallen from glory. And we're bummed about that. Well, I am at least. That leads to another problem with 40k frustration -- it's still the most played game, and the easiest game to get a match with. Some newer things, like X-Wing and Dropzone Commander are totally awesome but don't have as broad a player base. Makes it harder to find gaming groups, organized play events/tournaments, and stuff like that. It's hard to jump to a new game, not knowing what kind of support it will see from the wargaming community at large.
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Post by apothecarybob on Mar 28, 2014 8:13:12 GMT -5
That leads to another problem with 40k frustration -- it's still the most played game, and the easiest game to get a match with. Some newer things, like X-Wing and Dropzone Commander are totally awesome but don't have as broad a player base. Makes it harder to find gaming groups, organized play events/tournaments, and stuff like that. It's hard to jump to a new game, not knowing what kind of support it will see from the wargaming community at large. Well...lets not forget that 40k has also been around for a significant period of time. As for the model thing, yeah I agree, I've spent way to much money on 40k (and fantasy for that matter) only to learn that a bunch of the things I bought suck while a small handful are marginally awesome. Lets also not forget that most of the 40k players at ordo, and indeed nationally, have been playing for quite sometime, so most of us have sizeable collections when GW was still relatively cheap (remember when 20 guardsmen cost $33 instead of 10 for $22?). Disposable income, like you said Brian, will be spent on models anyway, its just how much money left over you will have at the end of the day. What GW needs to do to save 40k and fantasy is to release all the rules within the margin of 6 months of each other (instead of all at one time to give them some breathing room) and to not do a power creep. Also, make the rules free. I wouldn't mind spending $140 on a Imperial Knight, but not when the book costs $50 to use it.
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