Hey, folks. SinSynn here.
Well, I never thought this day would come. Seriously.
I prefer things in my lil' world to be consistent. When things start falling out of alignment, I start to freak out. In my tiny lil' mind, there's a distinct order to the insanity- my brainz might not werk so gud, but I manage to get through most days without hurting myself too bad. Mind you, the only way I manage that is cuz I rely on all the elements in my life being where I expect them to be, acting as I expect them to act.
I believe certain things can and should be taken for granted, like the shower working and the subways running so I can get my butt to my job every day. Lil' things like that...
All it takes is for one thing to go awry, and my whole day is screwed up. I am comforted, however, by the knowledge that if my shower doesn't work or if the subway has issues, these things will be corrected swiftly and I can return to business as abnormal.
Every once in a while, though, someone somewhere 'changes' something. A decision gets made that will impact my life, and the fools making these decisions don't even have the decency to consult with me first.
By way of a fer instance, over the last several months the MTA has decided to do 'track work' on my subway line. This has caused no end of delays in my daily commute.
Did they ask me if this was cool?
No. No they didn't.
-_-
Jerks.
When things start getting topsy-turvy, it's verr, verr bad fer poor lil' SinSynn.
It's like...waking up in da morning, reaching for my eyeglasses, and they're not there.
*gasp!*
Being that I'm like, friggin' blind without 'em, I am now confined to an area of about 7 by 10 feet, tentacles extended in every direction and gently probing about, cuz lord knows if I take a single step off the bed, I will immediately locate my glasses by stomping on them.
In truth- 99% of the time it's just The Crazy Lady having a lil' fun at my expense.
Ha ha. Iz verr funny, amirite?
She's a riot.
-_-
Whatevs. She gets her cruel lil' chuckle, I get my glasses back and get to plotting my pranky revenge.
*shrug*
At least she's consistent.
And so it has been in my hobby, for the longest time.
Games Workshop has consistently done things that don't make sense to anyone not working at Games Workshop. They've consistently raised prices, consistently written poorly phrased rules. Consistently relied on 'random' to solve thorny conundrums within those rules. Consistently provided the very worst in-game army-to-army balance of any mini-games system I have ever been exposed to.
Nevertheless, Games Workshop has consistently been a very large part of my hobby. Even when I gave away my GW stuffs and renounced 40k, vowing never to return (which I've done consistently, year after year)...I consistently break that vow.
I am an idiot- my readers will attest that I am consistently idiotic.
Lately, though, there's been a strange 'shift' in 40k-Land, and it's come from the most unexpected of sources. For if there's one group of gamers within the '40k community' that's unerringly consistent, it's the so-called 'competitive types.'
For as long as I can remember, they've always been about 'The Rules.'
- House Rules or 'Comp'?
Hell no.
- Nerfs or Bans?
GTFO.
- Omissions or Exceptions, for any reason whatsoever?
Absolutely not.
These are the people that get snarky when anyone complains about their OP Netlist.
'Lern 2 play,' is a consistent response, 'We're playing by The Rules, and The Rules say this is Legal.'
Whether or not anyone approved of their attitude towards the game, at least they were consistent- Play by The Rules. ALL of The Rules. No 'picking and choosing' which Rules you wanted to abide by- The Rules are The Rules. No matter how poorly written they may be, no matter how they may contradict one another or be entirely nonsensical altogether, they are inviolate and sacrosanct.
Now it seems as if the so-called 'competitive types,' who have been on flip mode since 6th Edition dropped, have lost their friggin' minds with the onset of 7th, and are busy...wait for it...House Ruling and 'Comping,' Nerfing and Banning, Omitting and making all kinds of crazy Exceptions to The Rules.
0_o
I know! Crazy, right?
What could possibly have them whining worse than a baby seal after his first butt-whipping at the hands of WAAC gamer?
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| *Well, fer starters...* |
Last week in the comments, my buddy Thuloid broke out with this statement:
[Games Workshop is] adopting a new business model, and abandoning the space of "competitive wargame."
Now I don't like to theorize about Games Workshop, their motives and business strategies an' whatnot any more, mainly cuz it literally hurts my head to do so after so many years. I've been bangin' my head against that wall fer a hot minute ('There's gotta be some logic here...'), to no avail. My head is ridiculously hard (And yes- that is what she said...No, it never gets old...), and I have yet to make a dent.
Thuloid is a lot smarter than I am, and what he said kinda stuck in my craw...cuz he's right.
Games Workshop really gave the competitive community a big middle finger with 6th Edition, and at the time...and even now, really, I thought it was so obviously deliberate I actually felt bad for Tournament crowd.
After all, I am one of them. I was one of those cats who lurked about Stelek's infamous 'Big Blue Shark Tank,' aka Yes The Truth Hurts, riffed about 'optimal unit choices' and argued about 'Rules as Written versus Rules as Intended' until even I realized I needed to go outside and find myself a life.
I'm also one of those 40k players who stormed off in a huff when 6th Edition came along...even slightly before then, actually, due to the game's complete lack of anything resembling balance. The poor Xenos Factions got no love during 5th Edition until Necrons came along, and since I wasn't a Necron player and I was extremely tired of being trounced by anything Imperial, I got all vexed an' whatnot.
I was all, 'Well I'm not interested in Forging a Narrative. Blah. I want balance. I want well-written, concise rules. Meow meow meow.'
And I was out.
You know what? I didn't hafta go far to find what I wanted. By the time I bailed on GW, the mini-game scene had become a delightful cornucopia of wonders. Awesome companies were giving their rules away for free. Seemingly every game ever cost far less than 40k to get into, seemingly every game had the things I was looking for- balance and well-designed rules.
I was filled with hobby bliss. I went through a Flames of War phase, I went through a phase where I wanted to try every game I saw...
I started playing Infinity, and I never knew a game could be so filled with sweet, delicious goodness...
Leaving 40k was probably the best thing I ever did as far as my hobby is concerned. I'm so much happier naow. So, so much happier...
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| * 'Cept I'd never use purple on my Charontid. Ew. Just ew. And I'd have a Malignos in there, cuz they're da awesome* |
But I am nothing if not weak.
I kept reading stoopid Black Library books on the sly. I followed every release on the blogs. I made fun of Games Workshop in the occasional post (Ok, maybe moar than occasionally...Don't you judge me! I said I was weak). I even made an aborted attempt at building a Chaos army, but I was burnt from jump- I went and bought a bunch of Warp Talons before I saw their statline and familiarized myself with the 6th Edition rules fer jump pack dudes...
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| * Hai! We're useless! * |
And then Games Workshop got all crazy with the add-ons and expansions and OhMyGawd it seemed like they were releasing a new Codex every other week, and I couldn't even catch my breath to riff about the new thing before it was the old thing.
-_-
After a while, I just became like 'meh' about the whole deal- about Games Workshop, and the seemingly endless clickbait nonsense drama that...I suppose even I'm guilty of as a blogger (*ahem* I blame Dragon's Claw). I lost interest in reading every post breaking down their quarterly financial report in ever-so-minute detail.
I never stopped loving the Grimdark, but since I didn't have anything invested in it, I was able to laugh at GW's bizarre business decisions an' whatnot.
And then...then one day...
I dunno, man, I just wanted to build something cool, miniatures-wise.
So, bam- I'm building a zombie-based Imperial Gua...err- Astra Militarum army. I basically spent the whole summer working, and this is my very first 3-day weekend since...I don't even remember when, so you can bet I'm psyched to spend some time with my lil' troopies. And now that my workload should be lightening up...
Oh, man, good times are a-comin.'
:)
But here I am, caring about stoopid 40k again.
-_-
I don't care in the same way I used to, however. I see no reason to be all 'Joe Competitive' about 40k now, that's for sure. Other games do that job for me now. Games better suited for competitive play.
The fact is, you simply can't play a decent game of 40k in like, 2 hours. Can't be done.
Fact is, 40k is in no way properly balanced at any particular points level to produce anything but rock-paper-scissors type matchups...or everybody just stands off and shoots each other until someone's dead.
Fact is, there's far too much Random in 40k for it to be considered fit for competition.
The funny thing is, Games Workshop has been pretty clear about their intentions regarding the game of 40k for like, ever.
We, the folks that play 40k, have traditionally been like, 'Pshaw! Iz perfectly fine tournament game!'
Knuckleheads that we are.
We had a happy accident with 5th Edition- for whatever reason, that edition, which featured a pretty much mandatory 'troops plus vehicles equals winning' mechanic, was workable as a tournament game with a lil' fix to the basic mission setup.
It went sour around the time the Imperial Guard 'Leafblower' list went undefeated at 'Ard Boyz, and got worse by the time every big event ever ended up with Space Wolf mirror matches in the finals, but most of the current 40k competitive community still remembers 5th Edition fondly.
I was a Xenos player, so...yeah. I don't remember it that way. Nyah.
The reason I'm willing to give 40k another go around now is for the same reason I got into 40k originally.
You know those old John Blanche drawings of two crazy-ass space armies shooting each other up? The ones where yer never really sure of the perspective or distance, cuz there's rockets flying everywhere and some of the dudes in the foreground are smaller than dudes in the background? And there's giant tanks and robots and Dreadnaughts with hands as big as their mechanical bodies, and everything and everyone is smashing each other up? And somewhere...somewhere in there is a dude yelling and holding aloft a sword, and when you see him yer totally feeling it, and yer like, 'F*ck yeah! Let's make space war! This is gonna be awesome!'
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| * Or maybe it's a powerfist. Whatevs * |
7th Edition seemed to finally offer me the opportunity to do that. I don't need to play Planetstrike to have Fortifications and I don't need to play Armageddon to put a Super Heavy on the table any longer. The big changes from 6th carried over, and if I think about them in a positive light, I see:
- Long dreamed of armies were made possible thanks to Allies
- Units that are not so popular can be given new life in Formations
- A game that says 'throw it in there' instead of imposing restrictions. The sci-fi sandbox of mini-games.
In theory, now more than ever, I can play that John Blanche picture. That image I've always had of what 40k could be? I can make that happen. It'll be a pain in the you-know-what, but I can do it.
Funny thing- everything always works in theory. In real-life practice? Not so much...
And yeah, it's easy to say that the Allies Matrix is a big ol' disaster, but let's be real- it's only a disaster cuz jerks will abuse it, and the same thing can be said about anything in 40k.
Sigh.
The fact is, we can all wonder aloud why Games Workshop doesn't tighten up their rules and balance their armies and do some friggin' playtesting or whatever, or we can just play the game for stoopid fun and the potential for a Blanche-ian moment. It's pretty clear that's what we're supposed to do with the game now.
There's still rules, however loose they may be, and folks are still holding tournaments, and the 40k competitive community seems to literally be at a loss as to what to do with this new ruleset. It was bad in 6th, when there were flyer issues thanks to the Hell Turkey and the Necron Croissants. Hideous 2+ re-rollable saves were everywhere and the Imperial Knight introduced the first D-Strength weapon to standard games of 40k. Some things were sorta official, like Forge World and Escalation, and other things, like the flyer book and the battle missions book (whatever they were called), were more or less ignored.
Now 7th Edition comes along and says you can do pretty much whatever you want.
I'm sure that makes TO's heads explode.
How times change. 7th Edition has forced TO's to break out with the Nerfbat and the Banhammer, but I am completely surprised at the lengths they're going to. Lords of War are gonna be an issue.
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| * He has his own book now, but you won't see him at a Tournament. Poor Ghaz :( * |
So lemme see if I got this straight- Lords of War are perfectly legal fer use in a standard game of 40k, and it sez so in The Rules, but I can't use one in a Tournament cuz they're...they're...Banning them?
0_o
We didn't ban Chaos Dual Lash Whip lists in 4th.
We didn't Ban Wolf Lord Deathstars back in 5th.
We didn't ban stoopid Daemons, with their 2up re-rollable nonsense in 6th.
All those things were legal, right? So we couldn't do it. We had to 'Lern 2 Play,' right? The list of broken stoopidity in 40k is endless, and some fool's always breaking something else. This is 40k we're talkin' 'bout here, the game with the very best, most supportive community ever...
That's sarcasm. That's totally sarcasm.
The fact that the competitive community hasn't yet started allowing Forge World stuffs into their events has baffled me for a while now, because the majority of Forge World stuffs is completely underwhelming in a competitive sense, and the occasional OP unit is no more OP than anything in 40k already.
And besides, who wouldn't wanna see Elysians at a 40k tournament? Or some of that 30k stuff like Mechanicum, or old-school beakies on jetbikes, or that cool Necron monster that phases through walls to eat fools?
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| *The new FW jammie, the Cerastus Knight-Castigator Model. Iz pretty sexy * |
The fact is, 40k can no longer be 'fixed' for tournaments with a few mission tweaks. GW deliberately made it wacky and random, so why not just play it as-is instead of imposing Comp, Nerfs, and Bans?
How is playing the game by The Official Rules gonna be any worse than your version of the game, which are just House Rules? Tinkering with the core rules is always gonna piss somebody off, that's why competitive types always used to make a big deal out of playing by The Rules. All of The Rules.
What ever happened to setting a points limit and picking three missions on the day of the event (to prevent list tailoring) and that was it?
I think the NOVA missions were actually a great addition to the game. How 'bout we say...1850 point armies, we use those missions and we're good to go?
Yeah- we'll use Battle-Forged armies like it says in The Rules. Yeah- we'll allow Detachments and Allies as per The Rules. 1850 points. With Allies, there's a LOT of possible combinations, so someone clever at building lists can really get creative...or abusive, depending upon one's point of view.
Now...considering the kinda stuffs you can put together with Allies and Knights an' crazy psyker combos and everything else, we're gonna balk at Lords of War?
When someone can run FOUR Imperial Knights at 1500 points, and just fill the rest up with chaff, a single Lord of War on the table would ruin everything?
Are. You. Surreal?
I can't help but notice most Fortifications beyond the Aegis Line with an AA gun (there's two to choose from! Woot!) have also been banned.
Buildings. Buildings are mad scary, yo.
-_-
I'm sorry, but fer once I feel like being a WAAC jerk, and spouting some sh*t like, 'Lern 2 Play.'
These are The Rules, amirite? When I look at the Force Org Chart, cuz yeah- there still is a Force Org Chart for Battle Forged armies, I see a slot for a Lord of War. Now if I feel like paying about 500 points minimum for 9 Hull Points that can be glanced to death by shooty armies in a single game turn, or assaulted to death by things like stoopid Viking Beakies riding giant wolves in a single game turn, then any competitive player will tell you I'm not taking the optimal choice.
Is the Eldar Revenant over powered? I dunno- is it moar over powered than three Wraithknights? It costs half an army's worth of points by itself...
Is it any better or worse than what the Eldar can already put on the table? How 'bout with Allies?
Competitive theory usually says 'moar guns equals moar win,' and in games at less than 2k points, any Lord of War in yer army is gonna mean sacrificing other stuffs. In a 1500 point game...well, good luck with that.
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| * Hey! I'm dancin' over here! * |
Since new Codex releases seem to be including Character Lords of War, I imagine it won't be long until one of the GT's allows them, but it'll likely be Characters only, and Ork players will continue to stare forlornly at the Stompas getting dusty on their shelves.
Same thing goes to all those folks who broke down and shelled out fer some Forge World goodies, or who dropped the dough for a big ol' Fortification...
Sure, they're in The Rules, but that doesn't mean you'll get to use them.
Same old same old.
I never thought I'd see the competitive community willingly embracing and advocating House Rules, Comp, Nerfing, Banhammers, Exceptions and Omissions, and not playing, and insisting on playing, by The Rules.
I am disappoint.
But at this point, at least I can say they're consistent...
Until next time, folks- Exit with catchphrase!
