How is 40k 7th edition "less competitive" than 40k 5th edition

[40kGamer]

Maybe tourney organisers should ensure that as well as a prize for the death and destruction you cause, which maybe won by a power list, that prizes for overall are also available. Try not to skew scores for painting, death and destruction and comp.

Or maybe they should just award the 'Bellthronk Prize for cheesiest WAAC netlisters' that might discourage people trying to win by list selection...

I recommended 2 awards at local events... the Asshat award for the most WAAC list and the Fluffy Bunny for the most well rounded. Haven't been able to get a lot of support to move it forward though...

- - - Updated - - -

I suffer from mild to severe Edition lag, having been shooting up the Galaxy since 2nd Ed (and some very tentative fumbles with Rogue Trader).

Warhammer is just as bad for me. It's seriously a push to remember Magic doesn't come at the end of the turn any more (and hasn't done for a long old time)....

I feel that. It all blends together to make a wonderful mess of what the rules of the day actually are!

[Mr Mystery]

Yup.

On the bright side, it does mean I encounter very, very few of these apparently ambiguous rules, because I'm well in the habit of reading what the rule says, rather than what I want it to say.

[iandanger]

More or less, the argument for 5th Ed as a competitive game is as follows:

In 5th edition, almost all armies could build a take all comers list, which when wielded by a skilled player could compete with any list. This pretty much looked the same, mostly vehicles with lots of melta, and heavily favored imperial armies. The rules were fairly tight and games played quickly. While draigo wing stomped faces among local game stores, at big events with skilled players they never made a major impact. That isn't to say GK with their S8 riflemen didn't have a place, but Paladins died to mass high strength shooting, which all take all comers lists had.

In the end, it was a bland edition, but consistent behavior and the lack of lists that truly broke the game is what a certain set within the competitive community (most of whom are gone on to FSA and Warmahordes) were gung ho about.

Personally I didn't like 5th, but I also haven't enjoyed 6th or 7th much. I don't think 40k is very good as a game. But the fluff and story are fun and heralds of ruin kill team is amazing, so I play despite the fact that I don't particularly enjoy the game mechanics.

[Auticus]

Thats just it though there wasn't really a Take All Comers list - thats just what it was named. TAC was really "Take a list that can fight Draigo, Longfang spam, and necrons". Those were the top of 5th edition and the truly mathematically optimized builds, and what the vast majority of people I encountered fielded.

There is this disparity that big events had these skilled players and local game stores were all a bunch of skill less dreks flinging dice and feces at each other. I went to the big events too - they played out similarly to local game stores and Draigo or Long fang spam were by far the most prevalent lists on the end tables every time (there were always the token anomaly here and there as well)

There wasn't a lack of listst hat broke the game. The top lists ALWAYS set out to break the game. Draigo lists broke the game because if you weren't toting melta and missile spam, you were toast. Thats breaking the game to me. Barring extraordinary luck or a player really being that top 5% of truly great players, if you brought a normal balanced list to a game involving draigo paladins, you were likely going to get rick rolled out of the building.

That there are more than the basic three powergamer lists is what a lot of people complain about now (I have to worry about fliers, I have to worry about super heavies, I have to worry about wave serpent spam, I have to worry about not getting cover saves, I have to worry about people combining those elements from multiple armies, I have to worry about a lot of vehicles, I may have to worry about hordes (not as common since those cost money and tournaments run on time limits but still something that must be thought about)).

The real issue that many have seems to me to be that a desire to return to an edition where you could expect and plan for the same 2-3 builds to be present and where there is no diversity in the armies so that it is easier to plan against.

[Psyfer]

As for combining flavour and balance, all I'll say is thus:

If a company with less then half the experience (Eg. Hawk Games Studio, Spartan games, Corvus Belli, Wyrd miniatures etc) can manage to combine a fairly balanced ruleset, why can't GW? They've been in this business for 30-odd years after all.

[Erik Setzer]

I suffer from mild to severe Edition lag, having been shooting up the Galaxy since 2nd Ed (and some very tentative fumbles with Rogue Trader).

Warhammer is just as bad for me. It's seriously a push to remember Magic doesn't come at the end of the turn any more (and hasn't done for a long old time)....

I have a bad tendency to remember rules as they used to be, not as they are now. Tank Hunters is one example that I get thrown off on, I remember it used to be +1 to penetrate, now it's a reroll (which is more useful in a lot of cases). Trying to remember, similarly, that Terror isn't a bubble psychology effect is also tricky at times.

- - - Updated - - -

Am I the only player that's managed to memorise their Codices? I can write an army list from memory without it and remember all the special rules during gameplay without having to grab the book all the time, most players I know are the same.

My core codex, yes. Some of the side stuff for it, even. (Hey, I play Orks, we've got a supplemental book chock full of stuff, plus two campaign books and a booklet, and a White Dwarf... so far.) I used to be good at doing it with every army in the game, but I haven't been able to afford all the new books, and don't have the time to devote to studying them that I used to have.

Probably doesn't help that I keep jumping between armies because I get bored easily.

[Charistoph]

Am I the only player that's managed to memorise their Codices? I can write an army list from memory without it and remember all the special rules during gameplay without having to grab the book all the time, most players I know are the same.

Memorizing your codex and the rulebook isn't always the issue. Memorizing all the other codices to help others or recognizing cheating, and being able to pull up ours to show your opponent that, "yes, that unit is a cheese monster in this specific case" is the other side of it.

[confoo22]

As for combining flavour and balance, all I'll say is thus:

If a company with less then half the experience (Eg. Hawk Games Studio, Spartan games, Corvus Belli, Wyrd miniatures etc) can manage to combine a fairly balanced ruleset, why can't GW? They've been in this business for 30-odd years after all.

I think this actually touches on a couple of things that I was thinking while pondering this. First off, you can say "why can't GW do what these other companies do?" but you have to realize that GW came of age in an environment when there really weren't nationwide wargame tournaments. Balance didn't mean anything, it was just a fun game of dice rolling and pushing your models around the table and people weren't concerned with building the all-mighty-tournament-win-everything list because there were no tournaments to win. So then you fast forward a few years and yes, tournies are a thing, but only after the game has become established so it was too late to go back and completely re-work the game from the ground up, especially when mixed with the possibility of having to re-work all the codexes at the time. And remember, GW still wasn't the multi-national million pound money maker that is today (and yes, I'm aware that profits are down, but they still make millions of pounds in profit), so the resources and time needed to do so may just not have been there.

So let's fast forward to today. You have a slue of games all over the place now that all were created either specifically with balance and tournaments in mind because they had the luxury of seeing what GW had done wrong in terms of balance and able to make the correction to their own systems. GW is trying to implement some balance (and has been thanked for it by being called "bland"), but it's a difficult and drawn out process when you have to balance the game across numerous factions, and is something that will probably never happen to the satisfaction of every gamer out there. I'd also add that there's really not a 100% balanced game with no underpowered unit whatsoever and completely devoid of powerlists, but that most of them are more balanced when compared to GW's games, which allows people to perpetuate the myth of perfect balance in other games (WMH anyone?)

So now you have the same complaints concerning balance as you've had in past editions except that there's actually other options in the gaming market with viable player bases. This allows for people who are truly disgruntled (and let's face it, some people who complain just like to complain and will never actually follow through on leaving) to leave for these other games, and when players actually see people leaving to go play these other games then the complaints resonate that much more. This feeds back into the cycle and makes 40k seem so much worse and it also makes it difficult for players who have bad experiences or get absolutely thrashed from being able to chock it up to bad dice or poor strategy, instead blaming balance issues and poor rules writing.

So no, these issues aren't new, but the options for dealing with them are and we've seen a steady restructuring of the market for wargames in the last five years. I personally feel that we're getting to the point where the bleeding will stop and people who like GW will play their games and people who like other games will play those. And hopefully there won't be a need for all the nasty 40k v Other wargames that pervades a lot of online forums / cesspits and we'll all be happier for it.

[Auticus]

Yeah the gamer base is a vastly different creature than it was in 2005, which was a vastly different creature than it was in 1995 etc.

2015 - gamers have become more and more like e-athletes... wanting e-sports forums for their games. I don't see that as a bad thing, but what I do see as a bad thing is in many cases a lack of critical thinking combined with just tossing labels onto something that they were fine with three years ago but claiming now that its worse (lack of balance today compared with 2012 for example) when the balance has been abysmal since rogue trader on up.

Very aptly - these newer companies have come up in the age of the e-sports era and are making their games accordingly.

[CoffeeGrunt]

I find part of the problem with balance is 40K's scale as well. Size it down to HoR Kill team scale, and you find that the absence of large blasts, high Toughness and hardy vehicles makes it a much more fair game. At a 1500-2000pts level though, there's just too many scary things that can be brought, and too much variety to be able to make a true TAC list anymore...