Time to Embrace the Horror II

[Mr Mystery]

It's all in the intention of the game.

I know it's hackneyed, but please forgive it's further use - Page 5 of Warmachine. It's a statement of the designer's intent, that the game is about bringing your best and giving your opponent six-nowt.

Compare to AoS - which in intent is more about just spending an evening playing a game against a friend, within mutually agreed boundaries.

Each game has it's own intent. Nothing wrong with either.

And to back up PW's statement, although in less..erm...emphatic words....

Systems are there to be broken. If someone is hell-bent on winning the game over any other consideration, any other balancing mechanisms (however flawed, however perfect) fall by the way side. They'll have that win by hook or by crook.

Let me take you back to 6th Edition Warhammer. Ready?

Diddly-do, diddly-do, diddly do (adjust vertical hold now, and fix after three seconds for desired affect).

I'm playing a game. My Dark Elves (with their 'rubbish' book) against Dwarfs. I've taken my usual army - 36 Repeater Crossbows, Black Dragon, Manticore, 4 Cold One Chariots and 2 Hydras (before they became War Hydras, when they weren't hideous death monsters). My opponent? Gunline. Nothing but Dwarf Handguns, Rangers with Great Weapons and Crossbows, Cannons, Cannons, Organ Guns with a side order of Cannons.

Now, I know this is going to be a tough game. But I also know I'm more than competent enough a general to smash my opponent to bits and carry the day. HURRAH! YAY ME! WOOT! Etc.

I was late getting to the shop because of traffic, so my opponent had kindly set up the terrain. And guess what? Each far corner? A hill. Press up against the middle of each long board edge? A hill. Centre completely open, desultory terrain on the middle of each flank..............in short, a gunline's dream deployment zone, regardless of who got which side.

Now, armies aside, this shows very poor sportsmanship from the get go. The table was stacked in my opponents favour. There was nowhere for my Monsters to hide. No cover for my Chariots and Hydras to take advantage of as the cross the board into combat.

In the end, I managed to win the game by a decent margin. Turns out my opponent couldn't guess range for toffee. He also failed to realise that you can't really block a Flyers charge, because the rules clearly states Monsters can see over intervening units, allowing me to declare charges over enemy units. Went straight up either flank in a classic pincer movement, and ripped him a new one.

So, not only had my opponent fielded an army which reduced his tactics to 'sit on a hill and shoot', but also reduced my own tactics to 'get across the board as fast as I can and hope I have enough left to do the necessary damage, but he'd also set up the terrain completely to his advantage.

And when I spanked him like a red-headed stepchild? Proceeded to whinge. And to moan. And claimed my army was broken and beardy, that I'd 'rules lawyered' him. That the Dark Elf book was just better.

Not a fun game. And not the only game of that type I've played.

So, if we take away the relative balance or lack thereof, depending on your own view, I'm still left with an opponent who shows no actual sportsmanship. If he'd won, he'd have done his usual 'tactical genius' routine, despite having not actually employed any, so not only a poor sportsman and a bad loser, he's also a bad winner.

No amount of points perfection or list restrictions would change that. Despite playing really, really well (create opportunities, capitalise on opponent's mistakes) I didn't enjoy that game at all.

And all because my opponent was a Richard.

So as I was saying - it doesn't matter how perfectly balanced a game is, or if there's no points and no real guide - someone determined to be an idiot is going to be an idiot.

[Charon]

No points games rely heavily on both people havin a ton of experience. And even if you are experienced there is always a little bias left in both players.
So debating about armies if you do not know **** about your opponents army (In have absolutely no Idea about most mechanicum units) talking each other into a balanced game is time consuming, boring and tedious.
It kinda works with AoS because the most of the units just look different but on principle it is like playing Space Marines against Space Marines every time.

[Mr Mystery]

Yeah.....it's really not.

But otherwise, it is all in the experience of the gamers.

Right now, pretty much nobody has fully figured out AoS.

Me? I'm able to judge what looks about right with my Ogres, but beyond that it remains largely unproven.

Thing is, I'm really enjoying this process. The experience of others is of course going to vary, but I've found the whole process has helped me to develop my rapport with my opponent.

Perhaps the difference is when you go into a game knowing it's not necessarily 100% balanced, and there's no pretence either way, you just sort of accept it? Well. I say 'you', should really put 'I'. As I've said before, with 'stop when you think that's plenty', those who want to win at all costs are easier to spot.

[Auticus]

To be honest, I got kind of burned out on GW's crooked balance. There have always been books that were clearly better and builds that were clearly better that made a mockery out of the point system, because those items are typically vastly undercost for what they do.

Moving away from points back to where I started in the 80s with historicals that had no points doesn't bother me at all because I have no faith in 40k or classic WHFB's crooked point costs.

[40kGamer]

Don't know about your experiences, but I've played my fair share of asymmetrical games in a points system game. We've never needed a wargame rulebook's help to fix a social issue, seems pretty backwards to be.

Agreed. In fact, it is easier for us to set up asymmetrical games WITH points as it gave us a rough idea of just how different we were setting the lists. No balancing mechanic at all is just lazy and doesn't solve any social issues anyhow. The competitive crowd will still find a way to set up face pounding AoS events if they think it's worth the time... personally I don't think it's even worth the time of casual play until it develops more.

[Erik Setzer]

No idea what else PW said, but I did catch above the quoted, "Who cares about tournaments?"

Well, a LOT of people do. And it's all thanks to Games Workshop.

I know the young'uns won't remember (and the trolls will ignore history), but GW promoted major tournaments with the Grand Tournaments originally. Demand for them grew, GW couldn't be in all the places people wanted them, independent tourneys popped up to fill that void (titled "IndyGTs", an homage to GW's tournaments), and eventually GW felt it was fine to save money and let the community run the circuit.

They also created the Rogue Trader Tournament system, named for the title they gave to independent retailers at the time (Rogue Traders), and meant to give a set of rules and scenarios (quite fun ones, too!) for running tournaments for local players. It was a popular system, and is the reason the local crowd, who aren't uber-competitive sorts, became so interested in tournaments.

You can't promote that kind of thing and spread it across the gaming community and then decide it was a bad idea and you want to put it back in a box and throw everyone under the bus for enjoying something you pushed... but that's what GW tried to do, and that's what the trolls love to run with. It wasn't until 'Ard Boyz that tournaments got bad, but most of us understood the problem with 'Ard Boyz.

Do a tournament like the original GTs or RTTs, and I think the anti-tournament people would like it. You weren't just judged on winning, you were also scored on painting, army comp, and sportsmanship. The tournaments promoted being a good player, bringing an army that wasn't built to stomp someone's face, being a nice person, and painting and modeling skills: a true celebration of the hobby.

Instead, we now have people considering "tournament" to be a dirty word because GW screwed up the 'Ard Boyz mess and it's a crutch to insult players rather than admit that even outside tournaments there are issues with game balance that not even "being a nice guy" can clear up.

[Captain Bubonicus]

Do a tournament like the original GTs or RTTs, and I think the anti-tournament people would like it. You weren't just judged on winning, you were also scored on painting, army comp, and sportsmanship. The tournaments promoted being a good player, bringing an army that wasn't built to stomp someone's face, being a nice person, and painting and modeling skills: a true celebration of the hobby.

Word. I remember those days - they actually ran a pretty cool tournament system before people started complaining about the "soft" parts of the scores and GW rolled out the 'Ard Boyz nastiness...

[40kGamer]

Word. I remember those days - they actually ran a pretty cool tournament system before people started complaining about the "soft" parts of the scores and GW rolled out the 'Ard Boyz nastiness...

It was a different time... back when sportsmanship and painting mattered more than simply beating your opponent to death.

[Kazzigum]

I'm genuinely pleased that this nonsense, just like every other nonsense effort to "fix" 40k will go no further than a bunch of digital bloviating online.

I honestly don't understand your reaction. I believe that 40K will be AoSed. You don't, or perhaps you believe that if it does so, that's a good thing. We disagree. I fail to see why you feel the need to hurl insults my way. I think 40k is gonna be AoSed and I think that's a bad thing. If I'm right, I intend to keep playing 7th edition and am positing to the community that perhaps we could try to fix the problems with the system, as I see them, since we will be staying with said edition far longer than we had done so in the past. It's a theoretical exercise. If you don't like it, or think we're (or perhaps just me) wasting our time, then, uhh ... don't participate?

- - - Updated - - -

Just disallow any special rules from applying to formations. They're a different way to select troops, that's it.

I had initially considered this, but it really doesn't address the problems with special detachments with all their 'free' stuff and allowing multiple lords of war shenanigans.

- - - Updated - - -

I wrote a post about exactly this, 'The CAD Will Not Save You': [url]http://variancehammer.com/2015/06/02/the-cad-will-not-save-you/[/url]

There's plenty of abuse to be had with just a CAD, and all this does is change who the winners and losers are - not that there are winners and losers.

While I will admit this is true to a degree, as we've been complaining about game balance for like 25 years now, I contend that it is much worse now. What's more, with just CAD, at least the balance issues are not so pronounced. All these new formations and special detachments push the system into being just a disguised version of Apocalypse, where the Winners dominate the losers to an exponential degree.

[Kazzigum]

No idea what else PW said, but I did catch above the quoted, "Who cares about tournaments?"

Well, a LOT of people do. And it's all thanks to Games Workshop.

I know the young'uns won't remember (and the trolls will ignore history), but GW promoted major tournaments with the Grand Tournaments originally. Demand for them grew, GW couldn't be in all the places people wanted them, independent tourneys popped up to fill that void (titled "IndyGTs", an homage to GW's tournaments), and eventually GW felt it was fine to save money and let the community run the circuit.

They also created the Rogue Trader Tournament system, named for the title they gave to independent retailers at the time (Rogue Traders), and meant to give a set of rules and scenarios (quite fun ones, too!) for running tournaments for local players. It was a popular system, and is the reason the local crowd, who aren't uber-competitive sorts, became so interested in tournaments.

You can't promote that kind of thing and spread it across the gaming community and then decide it was a bad idea and you want to put it back in a box and throw everyone under the bus for enjoying something you pushed... but that's what GW tried to do, and that's what the trolls love to run with. It wasn't until 'Ard Boyz that tournaments got bad, but most of us understood the problem with 'Ard Boyz.

Do a tournament like the original GTs or RTTs, and I think the anti-tournament people would like it. You weren't just judged on winning, you were also scored on painting, army comp, and sportsmanship. The tournaments promoted being a good player, bringing an army that wasn't built to stomp someone's face, being a nice person, and painting and modeling skills: a true celebration of the hobby.

Instead, we now have people considering "tournament" to be a dirty word because GW screwed up the 'Ard Boyz mess and it's a crutch to insult players rather than admit that even outside tournaments there are issues with game balance that not even "being a nice guy" can clear up.

Thank you for this. This is exactly why I proposed the whole exercise in the first place. As I've said, my brother and I are not particularly competitive guys, but we both attended two of the GW GTs back in the day. We both scored firmly in the middle of the pack, if we were lucky, but it was a great time. Those were the good old days. I enjoyed the hell out of those. They were not perfect, like the game balance will never be perfect, but what's wrong with tweaking the system a bit in the ever-elusive attempt at perfection?