What is "Competitive Gaming" and Why I Feel 40k Never Has Been

[Auticus]

Last week I wrote a little forum post that turned into an article asking “what makes 7th edition 40k LESS COMPETITIVE than 5th edition 40k”. The answers that were posted back and the conversation that followed highlighted a very important piece of information that probably should have been resolved first. The definition “competitive gaming” had many different definitions to many different people; no wonder there is such heated discussion on the topic!

I don’t think that this article is going to be the ultimate definition of what Competitive Gaming is, but I am going to give my opinion on what Competitive Gaming is and will also touch on why I feel that Warhammer 40,000 has NEVER been a competitive game in any of its editions.

To the first topic, Competitive Gaming is to me a game played between people where the skillset of the players are compared against and the player with the most skill should come out on top. This can be in anything, be it sports like football, soccer, or games like chess.

Competitive Gaming should primarily be resolved based on the skill of the player(s) involved and should be against players of roughly equal caliber.

For example, the game of football can be played by anyone. However, there is a large difference between a high school foot ball team, a college football team, and a professional football team. We expect that these teams be matched up against people in their same class or caliber.

Fighting sports such as boxing or mixed martial arts, or even wrestling, pair people up in weight classes, because there is nothing LESS competitive than setting a heavy weight fighter up against a 130 lb fighter.

Competitive players also have to deal with random elements in the form of weather, sporting venues, and things of that nature. Not only must they deal with them, they must overcome them.

Competitive Gaming ultimately seeks to determine who is the better overall player.

Why I feel 40k has never been a competitive game has nothing to do with its core rules. The things many people who claim to be competitive talk about hating, I don’t see as making any more or less “competitive”. Random charges, random powers, etc don’t make a game less competitive, they enforce a different set of skills and tactics that must be employed.

However, the lack of game balance between factions DOES make a game less competitive, and Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy have never had any real balance in any of the editions, which is to me why neither game is competitive nor has it ever been.

When competing in warhammer, players will actively seek to have their army list do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. In sports terms, it is the same as being handed a professional football team, being able to freely obtain all of the super star players in the league, and then also be given the caveat that one can play teams at the high school or college level, and if the weather is not preferable one has the power to change the weather so that conditions are always perfect.

As a fighter, it would be like getting to be the heavy weight fighter and taking on opponents in weight classes far below the one assigned.

None of these scenarios to me is competitive. I’d even go so far as to say that actively engaging in these types of contests is NON-COMPETITIVE because the skill of the player is secondary to how well the deck can be stacked. While that may be fine in a deck game like Magic: The Gathering – in a game of war where one expects tactics and strategies to be tested this falls very very short.

To me – for 40k to be truly a competitive game, the balance in all of the factions needs seriously overhauled. Barring that, a solid comp system needs put in place to put more builds in viable standings.

Second, for 40k to be truly a competitive game, tournaments should deviate from every table being the same and having the same scraps of terrain on them. This enforces certain build types. A truly good player should be tested on different types of boards, with different types of terrain and cover available. Start showcasing tournaments where some tables are like city scapes where line of sight is not freely given to every model on the table, and you’ll start to see lists shifting to accommodate the fact that you won’t always get to play on planet bowling ball and do nothing but shoot.

Third – for 40k to truly be a competitive game, the designers need to lessen or eliminate the ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS aspect of the game. This has always existed, from the time I started playing in third edition, to today.

My two primary tournament 40k armies were starcannon spam eldar and leafblower Imperial Guard.

A little history: my first army was Dark Angels. After three months of playing the game I played in my first tournament and got curb stomped bad. The winner of that event was a star cannon spam eldar player, who said something to me to this very day that I will never forget, even nearly twenty years later. He said “eldar are a tough army to play properly and only veteran players can really get a hang of it”.

I didn’t understand that, since he tabled me in three turns by rolling a lot of dice with weapons I got no save against. So I built the same army. The next tournament I attended, about six months into the hobby, I won my first tournament by tabling two blood angels players and a space wolf player.

That really summarizes competitive 40k to me. I am not a great player. When you kick my crutches out from under me, I win as much as I lose, and I certainly would never have been able to win a tournament without a list that took advantage of no cover, and a meta which was dominated by blood angels players with a smattering of space wolf players.

That next year and a half I played in over one hundred competitive games. I lost twice: once to an ork player and once to a tyranid player. I mistakingly thought that I was a great 40k player because my lists were busted and few played my hard counter (a hoard army).

The thing was, I was the 270 lb heavy weight fighter fighting 125 lb high school kids. I was the New England Patriots playing football games against Springfield High. There was nothing competitive about it. When I tried playing lists that did not exploit whatever was broken at the time, I didn’t do nearly as well. That to me again speaks volumes about competitive 40k.

It never has been competitive while the army rules are as imbalanced as they have always been and sadly has never really been a test of player skill or strategy so much as it has been a test with how good one is with rudimentary math and effective spreadsheet skills.

[Path Walker]

While people write there own army lists from all available options, you wont get balance, either people write a list and it goes in a pot and you draw one at random (forcing people to write balanced lists, they don't want to give someone an advantage or potentially give themselves a disadvantage) or, force everyone to take the same lists.

Those ways will make a balanced game.

[Denzark]

Your sports team analogy doesn't strictly stick because all players can access 'all of the super star players in the league'. No one is forced to take an underpowered, sub-meta list.

The issue is not necessarily rules balance, but points balance, where some units/armies have such economies of scale that they are hard to beat.

I agree what you say about table layout. But that links into another point - can a tournament ever be truly competitive unless all tables are identical? And even moreso, all armies.

Unless there is a swiss system after a random selection at first round, you can get a tourney winner who just had lucky selections.

Actualy in the face of lacking identical missions identical armies identical tables, and other factors like randomness (daemons table) and some factions bending the rules (ie achieivng extra VPs in a way that their opponent can) you must say that stock 40K is not a competitive game at all and you cannot game competitively in it with out some serious modification.

[Erik Setzer]

Actualy in the face of lacking identical missions identical armies identical tables, and other factors like randomness (daemons table) and some factions bending the rules (ie achieivng extra VPs in a way that their opponent can) you must say that stock 40K is not a competitive game at all and you cannot game competitively in it with out some serious modification.

So no game with any amount of luck can be competitive? No miniatures game that uses dice or any random factor. Not even poker can truly be competitive.

Except there's ways to get around that stuff, for the most part. "Hedge your bets" in different ways, basically. Make sure luck can't hurt your army too much. Part of the skill is in building lists, so if you built a nastier list, you're a better player in that part of the game at least.

Pretty much the only games that could be considered competitive, with such a definition, are chess, checkers, and the like.

[Charon]

However, the lack of game balance between factions DOES make a game less competitive, and Warhammer 40k and Warhammer Fantasy have never had any real balance in any of the editions, which is to me why neither game is competitive nor has it ever been.

The problem is that if this does make a game less competitive (which it does, we tend to see the same armies at top spots) it also makes the game less fun for the player who lost the codex lottery.
You do not need a competitive setting to realize which codex is good/bad or which unit is OP/UP.
I have NEVER seen ogryns/bullgryns in an IG list. What I do see (in a non competitive setting) EVERY TIME are Wyvern Batteries, Imperial Priests and Pask.

[Auticus]

Depends on your setting. We do have bulgryns in our campaign. Especially during zone mortalis missions. They are very useful in there.

The thing with tournaments is that its always the same type of missions, which bleeds into casual play as well.

[Erik Setzer]

Pask.

My friend said I was being over the top by bringing a Knight in a 1500 point match. I pointed out he brought Pask.

I also wiped his whole army out once not just because it was the only way for me to win (bad luck with Tactical Objectives, he got a huge lead), but because the last model was Pask, and seriously, **** Pask. With a rusty shovel.

(Though I did enjoy in another game casting the Telekinesis spell that causes "Gets Hot!" on a Pask-controlled Punisher. Freaking hilarious.)

[Path Walker]

The only way to balance that out so that all sides are fairly even at the starting point is to look at what M:TG does, everything is very fairly well balanced and they spend a lot of time and money ensuring this is the case but, that comes at a price and GW don't see that as beneficial to them as a business to do. We're seeing why now, as they release more and more things that enourage new things and different ways of playing, balancing all those would be a nightmare, Magic sets are based around particular mechanics and so encourage particular builds, the whole design philosophy is designed around competitiveness.

So, GW could do this, aim the game at the competitive crowd but they've desided against it (which I don't think we need to get drawn into as a conversation), if thats the case, then the responsibility to make 40K a competitive game relies on those who want it to be competitive.

This really a case of trying, as I think Mr Mystery is fond of saying, to get a family salon to enter formula 1, its possible but you can't expect good results,

[lantzkev]

odd points and a completely silly argument in total...

For example, the game of football can be played by anyone. However, there is a large difference between a high school foot ball team, a college football team, and a professional football team. We expect that these teams be matched up against people in their same class or caliber.

Have you ever gone to a soccer tournament? there's alot of teams you will outright destroy, they were by far "terrible" and not of the same caliber... like wise with pro football... there's alot of teams that just aren't that great. like Cleveland Browns, who haven't ever even seen a superbowl game let alone won a superbowl.

Competitive players also have to deal with random elements in the form of weather, sporting venues, and things of that nature. Not only must they deal with them, they must overcome them.

Not true, I'm guessing pro bowlers aren't competitive or any indoor pro game....

Second, for 40k to be truly a competitive game, tournaments should deviate from every table being the same and having the same scraps of terrain on them.

not true at all, most competitive games/sports are played on the EXACT same terrain, weather is attempted to be controlled, all random elements are minimized or reduced. Hell in 40k, you can buy your own terrain and change the map so to speak, likewise, the missions and deploy change the importance of terrain. And on the last issue with this point, you site a reason "it enforces certain builds" but you don't even provide anecdotal evidence.

Start showcasing tournaments where some tables are like city scapes where line of sight is not freely given to every model on the table,

did you watch the LVO?

Third – for 40k to truly be a competitive game, the designers need to lessen or eliminate the ROCK/PAPER/SCISSORS aspect of the game. This has always existed, from the time I started playing in third edition, to today.

What would you suggest otherwise? Why do you think there shouldn't be hard/soft counters? you've come up with a point, but sighted no reason as to why it's bad for competition.

That really summarizes competitive 40k to me. I am not a great player. When you kick my crutches out from under me, I win as much as I lose, and I certainly would never have been able to win a tournament without a list that took advantage of no cover, and a meta which was dominated by blood angels players with a smattering of space wolf players.

Wait so you're telling me you won and were competitive, because you knew what the field would be like and the predominate strategy was?
Gee, that sounds awful to win because of planning and foresight.

[Path Walker]

Basically, I think whats being said is that 40K isn't a competitive game but here are some ideas to increase the level at which it can be played competitivly and still be an interesting game.

From what I've seen of the LVO it did have decent terrain coverage but thats the first and only time I've seen a 40k tournament that used anywhere near the right amount of terrain for the game.

But i think the general jist of the argument is that more balanced "all comers" lists that don't spam particular units or facets of the game are preferable as they stop the situation where an army is unbeatable except by another army that it might not ever face, the way to encourage the more interesting lists is to try and make it as unpredictable as possible, so that they can't tailor the list to the situation. Thats why he suggests more variety of missions and terrain, having no way of knowing what you'll face and how you'll face it means that you'd naturally want to aim more towards the middle.