Why do people want to make this a different game?

[ChaplainCharlie]

"I am not whining, I am complaining. Do you want to hear whining?" -Rarity

But it's a tricky number. I can agree that the sysytem could use improvement and that codex balance would be nice or indeed something I would put a lot more effort into. However, the issue I see why such complaints get labeled as whining is because the whiners usually complain for the benefit of competitive play. Though I do not have issues with competitive or WAAC gamers, I personally do not like that kind of play. This is a hobby for me. It's fun and for me fun comes from other sources than beating your opponent through min-maxing or armylist tinkering. But I acknowledge that other people have different tastes.
But considering that the majority of gamers are in it for fun, not "WINNING!" they might feel treathened by a loud minority trying to turn the game into something they do not like. The rules and codexes can be tweaked and actually should be tweaked to allow diverse competitiveness. However, demands like "GW should cater competitive gaming!" will cause backlash. Allowing a competitive, ie balanced setting is beneficial for casual gamers too, but the entire system shouldn't be built around making into some sort of sport with strict rules set in stone and encouraging cut-throat behaviour.
We live in a world where, it seems, everyone is a potential enemy competing for jobs, education, food, services, mates, time, etc. Do you really need a hobby that is like that too and you use your free time on? I, personally, would rather relax on my free time, but I know that's not for all. However, relaxing by casual gaming IS what 40k is about and any changes perceived to be drastically attacking that will be met with hostility.

To come back to my original quote, remarks on how the rules set is dificult or unintuituve or even blatantly broken with regards to how the game is supposed to be played are complaining and hence beneficial. Comments on how the game lacks competitive elements and fails to provide to the WAAC crowd are whining. Whining fails to approach the problems of the system from the system's benefit and for the benefit of all gamers/hobbyists. Whining only intends to further personal agendas, not a common, hobby-wide goal of a more enjoyable game for everyone...

You can play LARPs competitively too, but is that really in the spirit of things? GW made 40k to be casual fun. If you want to play a casual fun game like a sport or for money, feel free to do so, but understand that the game wasn't built for that. If you've invested hundreds of currency units and months of day labour to crafting an army for competitive 40k, then that is your problem. No GW marketting speech that I am aware of ever presented 40k to be about extreme competition and tournament glory...

[Tamwulf]

40K can be a fantastic, funtastic game between two friends drinking a beer and hanging out. I love seeing great paint jobs on the table, and intricate, complex conversions. I like PLAYING the game.

What ruins the game for me is the min/max of units. Purposely arming multiwound models differently for wound shenanigans, putting everything in a transport, deep striking an entire army to deny your opponent an extra turn (and hopefully the game ends early). Arming everything you can with melta to deal with all the vehicles. I hate seeing Longfang Spam, Psy-Riflemenx3, Blood Angels Assault Marines with no jump packs, but plenty of Razorbacks. The players that optimize lists to give themselves a +0.17 chance of success by adding that one extra Missile Launcher. They pour through a codex, looking for optimum builds and discard any unit that doesn't fit. Take for example Blood Angles. They have Sanguinary Guard, but they are discarded in favor of an Honor Guard in a Razorback. They have Terminators, but those are discarded for Furiso Librarians and Sanguinary Priests. Scouts? Tactical Squads? Nope. It's better/cheaper/more effective in these players' minds to field as many Assault Marines in Razorbacks as possible, as redundancy and firepower matter. Death Company? Ha! What about bikes? Or Landspeeders? Or Land Raiders? All disregarded in favor of more redundant, optimized builds. As a side note, I do have a BA army, but I don't like Assault Razorback Spam. I like the Deathcompany, and Stormravens are great IMO. This means I'm NOT a "competitive player". I like to win, who doesn't it, but my victories are few and far between. The competitive player, the tournament player sees nothing wrong with this, and actually looks down on the player that "Doesn't play to win" by taking the best lists possible. In their mind, why wouldn't you take unit A or unit B?

If you play Xeno's, it's an uphill fight against any Power Armor army. You have to bring an A++ list, and play your best game while your Space Marine opponent can play just about whatever list he wants and have a good chance at winning the game. That is a balance issue internally to the game, and it's reflected in the fact that hardly anyone plays a Xenos army. The ones that do play them are diehards, clinging to the glory of previous editions, or the fact that they have 10,000 points of Eldar. It's not a negative thing, it just is here in the twilight of Fifth Edition.

To satisfy those uber competitive tournament types of players, I think GW should come out with a separate Tournament Rules system with predefined army lists for each Codex. That way, it would be the skill of the player and not their ability to field "broken" lists. Of course, it'll never happen, as it takes the key factor out of tournament lists before any dice are even rolled- army selection.

Every game system has rules that could be improved, but if you don't focus on the rules too much and just want to play a game, 40K is fun. It's the competitiveness of the players that can ruin the game.

[otakuzoku]

when we fix the rules like GW say the other players refuse to pay them cause there not offishal GW rules. its a catch 22. seriously if any of us here wrote a codex and took it to a flgs to play you may get 1 game if were lucky. and lots of rolled eyes "cause here comes another fan-dex". it could be a finally crafted work of art, with balanced units, grate fluff and strong rules that truly embody the spirit of the army . but its just another Fan-dex or fan rule set. untill GW ordained it so. it like the LAW, a law can make no sense to you, be impractical, unjust and have little basis in reality but if you brake it expect the cop on your door. its the LAW

[Ebon]

I've seen this kind of post many times, the kind that amounts to "if you don't like it, play something else". In most cases, we play it because we love what the game used to be or because we love the IP. Also, remember that teh internet is a self-selected crowd.

[Bassik]

We whine because we care. We love much about 40k, and we want to keep playing, there are just niggling things which are putting us off. Especially when you get into the wider world of other miniatures games and can see how the addition of two words in a paragraph can eliminate the need for 50 pages of useless debate on the rules forum, etc.

This will never happen. The rules may one day be crystal clear with no room for different interpretations or errors, and still we will see these 50 page threads of useless debate, because if you read "juuuust right" you see that, suddenly, this very clear and cut rule can be bend to your advantage.

These threads reach 50 pages because the same arguments get repeated over and over again. The way I see it, the problem lies with the people on the internet, not with the game. Grow up, or put your mini's away and buy a puzzle.

[Grocklock]

Because I'm stuck with 40k since that's what the vast majority of wargamers in my town play.
If I could play Warmahordes or Heavy Gear in my town then I wouldn't complain about 40k.

I'm moving to another town on Sunday since I finally got a job () and I hope there's more diversity there.

Got to say read this post and all it said is I whine about 40k because its the game i play if i could play warmachine or heavy gear then i could wine about them

[Grocklock]

when we fix the rules like GW say the other players refuse to pay them cause there not offishal GW rules. its a catch 22. seriously if any of us here wrote a codex and took it to a flgs to play you may get 1 game if were lucky. and lots of rolled eyes "cause here comes another fan-dex". it could be a finally crafted work of art, with balanced units, grate fluff and strong rules that truly embody the spirit of the army . but its just another Fan-dex or fan rule set. untill GW ordained it so. it like the LAW, a law can make no sense to you, be impractical, unjust and have little basis in reality but if you brake it expect the cop on your door. its the LAW

But if you want to play fan dexs then play them, but understand that others may not wish too. You have to remember that alot of fan made stuff does have the stigmar of this is my lord with a WS 10 and kills amrines on a 2+. genrally people like to get an idea of the rules before they play so try allowing people to read over them to get an idea.
Or form, a group of people who are willing to see if it is balanced.

The thing about hte main rules and fan made things is that everyone can access the main rules but not everyone can access the fan made dex. I don't mind a fan dex as long as it is a fun game, if it is a competative game like a tordiment then I would have to see the rules first to decide weather or not i wish to play against it.

[sakura_ninja]

Unbalanced books, with super stupid characters with an army that wins on a 2+?...so grey knights?.

[RandomThoughts]

Please don't tar us all with the same brush. I have been invested with GW's mythos for more than half of my life, and still want to play a balanced wargame. The biggest issue is that GW see themselves as a miniatures company, while their customers see them as a wargaming company. The rules have equal importance as the models to most customers, while the rules are something to help sell models to GW. Until this disparity is fixed, you will always have people bitching about the rules and GW never taking active steps to balance their games as new issues arise, as most of those new issues are caused by new books, and power creep gets people buying the new models.

Unfortunately for GW, this is not the 80s or 90s anymore where the lack of a centralized way of publishing rules updates was unavailable. Their website is perfectly suited to store FAQs, amendments and balance fixes and the like. While the first is handled well (usually!), they do not seem interested in actively maintaining their game. Customer unhappy with their army do one of three things:

1) leave the hobby. That's fine, chances are your army was finished so you weren't contributing to GW's revenue stream anyway (i.e. buying more models).
2) keep playing anyway. Cool, you provide some flavour for people to fight against, help them with the hobby, etc. Win for GW.
3) buy a new army. Hurruh, you're now GW's favourite kind of customer!

I have been a gamer (as in electronic) for most of my life, and with the dawn of the Internet and especially multi-player games I expect companies to regularly balance/patch their games if issues arise. A lot of their current customers also come from the same generation, so GW's attitude towards the actual games can feel confusing, annoying and often insulting. Now I'm playing 40K properly again, I have come to accept that this is how GW works. Doesn't mean that I have to like it, or that I will be quite about it .


Also, some food for thought: most of the issues with GW's games isn't down to the rulebook, but the codexes.

The thing a lot of players forget is GW actively encourages this sort of behaviour! Their answer (which I 100% agree with) has always been that if you find problems and conflicts in the game on a regular basis you should patch it yourself with houserules. I appreciate house rules aren't useful in competitive games but then organisers can quite happily come up with their own house rules too.

It's not the game that is imbalanced, it is the players.

People just want the game to be individual to them, to be what they wish it could be, let's face it on the surface 40k works, its flawed, its clunky, its treated badly by gw and certain players but it works, but some people want more, and who can blame them, and some ideas are awesome and some are just stupid, but hey 40k like all rulesystens belong to YOU the player, and its up to you to do whatever you like with them, gw will not send the thought police.


It's just a shame a good chunk of players will as they don't ever understand that no game in existance works straight out the book, all require work as they are just templates, the chaos codex is a great example, every 5 minutes somebody will moan about the chaos codex for hours, but they won't just sit and tweak the codex, if talk to there gaming group about improving it, why?, because they can't be bothered even though it will improve the game for them.

I'm not denying that this is a big part of the problem, but given that GW has always made no secret of the fact that it considers itself a miniatures company, with rules being a supporting factor on the side, and just about everyone knows this, to consistently whine about it seems like (to use the ongoing fast food analogy) going in to MacDonalds, buying a cheeseburger, and complaining that it's not KFC.

I would say that the game is perfect as it is. It is the players lack of ability in commanding their army that makes them be defeated. Armies aren't unbalanced, Space Marines are super human immortal warriors wearing armour so broad and thick that they aren't meant to die to some runty squig herder with a pitchfork! Tyranids are made for close combat and excel at such things. Necrons are made to be relentless and evil. Grey knights are overpowered? they are DEMON hunters not frickin mushroom collectors. They have to hunt and fight demons day in day out. They are made to kill them. It's all about how you play your army, how you set it up, where you place the models, how you spread your points cost, how you roll your die. It's down to you. You as the player have the choice of what to play and how to play it. If you get wiped out and feel it's unfair, maybe you should look at where the buck stops. Your opponent didn't roll your invulnerability save, he didn't choose your elite choice, he didn't roll your armor save that could have saved your greater demon. YOU did.

This game is perfect as it is. Always has been, always will be. It is down to the players inexperience, incapability and incompetency at being a general that they lose.

you ask: Why do people want to change the game? because they suck at it. Because they feel cheated by the rules they knew about when they started their ill fated game. Because they can't handle that their opponent rolled 10 6's in a row and saved every single one of his invulnerability saves and all they could do was roll 1's.

There will always be (always) someone within every game ever made that complains about something. It seems human nature. People just aren't happy to accept something as it is. They are much more happy to gripe and groan and moan about it.

40K can be a fantastic, funtastic game between two friends drinking a beer and hanging out. I love seeing great paint jobs on the table, and intricate, complex conversions. I like PLAYING the game.

What ruins the game for me is the min/max of units. Purposely arming multiwound models differently for wound shenanigans, putting everything in a transport, deep striking an entire army to deny your opponent an extra turn (and hopefully the game ends early). Arming everything you can with melta to deal with all the vehicles. I hate seeing Longfang Spam, Psy-Riflemenx3, Blood Angels Assault Marines with no jump packs, but plenty of Razorbacks. The players that optimize lists to give themselves a +0.17 chance of success by adding that one extra Missile Launcher. They pour through a codex, looking for optimum builds and discard any unit that doesn't fit. Take for example Blood Angles. They have Sanguinary Guard, but they are discarded in favor of an Honor Guard in a Razorback. They have Terminators, but those are discarded for Furiso Librarians and Sanguinary Priests. Scouts? Tactical Squads? Nope. It's better/cheaper/more effective in these players' minds to field as many Assault Marines in Razorbacks as possible, as redundancy and firepower matter. Death Company? Ha! What about bikes? Or Landspeeders? Or Land Raiders? All disregarded in favor of more redundant, optimized builds. As a side note, I do have a BA army, but I don't like Assault Razorback Spam. I like the Deathcompany, and Stormravens are great IMO. This means I'm NOT a "competitive player". I like to win, who doesn't it, but my victories are few and far between. The competitive player, the tournament player sees nothing wrong with this, and actually looks down on the player that "Doesn't play to win" by taking the best lists possible. In their mind, why wouldn't you take unit A or unit B?

If you play Xeno's, it's an uphill fight against any Power Armor army. You have to bring an A++ list, and play your best game while your Space Marine opponent can play just about whatever list he wants and have a good chance at winning the game. That is a balance issue internally to the game, and it's reflected in the fact that hardly anyone plays a Xenos army. The ones that do play them are diehards, clinging to the glory of previous editions, or the fact that they have 10,000 points of Eldar. It's not a negative thing, it just is here in the twilight of Fifth Edition.

To satisfy those uber competitive tournament types of players, I think GW should come out with a separate Tournament Rules system with predefined army lists for each Codex. That way, it would be the skill of the player and not their ability to field "broken" lists. Of course, it'll never happen, as it takes the key factor out of tournament lists before any dice are even rolled- army selection.

Every game system has rules that could be improved, but if you don't focus on the rules too much and just want to play a game, 40K is fun. It's the competitiveness of the players that can ruin the game.

But if you want to play fan dexs then play them, but understand that others may not wish too. You have to remember that alot of fan made stuff does have the stigmar of this is my lord with a WS 10 and kills amrines on a 2+. genrally people like to get an idea of the rules before they play so try allowing people to read over them to get an idea.
Or form, a group of people who are willing to see if it is balanced.

The thing about hte main rules and fan made things is that everyone can access the main rules but not everyone can access the fan made dex. I don't mind a fan dex as long as it is a fun game, if it is a competative game like a tordiment then I would have to see the rules first to decide weather or not i wish to play against it.

Well, look how much smoke the leak-hammer ruleset procuded, a lot of people are aware of it, anyone interested can easily obtain a copy, and I still had problems to convince anyone in my store to even give it a try..

[Spell_of_Destruction]

Well, look how much smoke the leak-hammer ruleset procuded, a lot of people are aware of it, anyone interested can easily obtain a copy, and I still had problems to convince anyone in my store to even give it a try..

Yeah, I think you need to have a group of (or at the very least two) like minded people who are willing to enjoy and persevere with the system. Even if you can convince someone that the 'leakhammer' ruleset is good, it's a big time investment to learn a whole new ruleset which you may never even use again.

[ReveredChaplainDrake]

I want to respond to the idea of "why not fix the rules ourselves".

Because it's not official and doesn't matter. GW rules are practically a language. Assuming WYSIWYG were adhered to, I could play somebody in 40k who doesn't even speak English and still get a good game in. The rules may not be perfect, but part of the contract, for want of a better word, of playing 40k at all is that we agree that these are the rules. We may disagree with the design philosophy behind them, we may think they're dumb, we may think they're nonsensical, but nobody runs around saying that Spawn cost 20 pts a model because that's simply not true. They should cost 20 pts a model (please don't make this a Spawn debate argument; it's just an illustration), but they don't, and we accept that they don't. So instead we play good things like Plague Marines and Lashprinces, stuff that isn't overpriced, or more than likely just play an army that can handle the absurd levels of cheapness of the modern meta. Is it an act of laziness to not write one's own CSM codex where Spawn are fair and useful choices? A little bit, probably, but the alternative is not just writing up a fandex and playtesting it a bit. The alternative is writing up a fandex and getting everybody to go along with it. Everybody. To make a fandex, quality or otherwise, accepted by the playerbase at large, you literally have to get the full acceptance of everybody who plays the game. Most fandex writers don't have that kind of publicity, but GW commands this kind of adherence because it's their yard and they make the rules. Even if a fandex is given all the praises in the world, and even if you're the best general with it, your entire gaming ability gets an asterisk next to it because you're not using GW's official stuff. People would rather play GW's busted yet official rules than risk playing a rules set that may be good but isn't officially endorsed.

Watch, I'll prove the power of commercial authority right here, right now: As a matter of fact, I am writing a game of my own design. It's a tactical RPG I call "Science and Sorcery". Want to play? Didn't think so.

GW's system isn't the best system in the world, especially when I have to screen my opponents and throw out any challengers who bring Grey Knights. For one, it means that I'm getting less fun because I have to either turn the game down and do something productive or knowingly waste my time on a foregone conclusion. But on another angle, it's not fair to my would-be opponent who can no longer find a game because nobody wants to waste their time fighting a broken army unless they also play a broken army. 40k is not unplayable. Poorly written, poorly tested, and prohibitively expensive, yes, but it's not physically unplayable. It's un-fun. And when it's not fun, we complain about it because we want it to be fun, and there are so many things GW can do to make their product better that they just aren't doing. Maybe pointing this stuff out is a waste of time, but at least we're trying to get reasonable results through reasonable actions. More reasonable than walking into your FLGS with a freshly-printed fandex and expecting people to line up to play you...

[sakura_ninja]

If you agree these are the rules then you agree to the most important rule as declared very early on and clearly by gw.
"the rules are not important"

[Nurgling Chieftain]

The rules may one day be crystal clear with no room for different interpretations or errors, and still we will see these 50 page threads of useless debate, because if you read "juuuust right" you see that, suddenly, this very clear and cut rule can be bend to your advantage.

And that's why chess forums are filled with people arguing over what the rules are. /sarcasm

[Mikial]

First, my hats off to Chapters Unwritten for having balls enough to start this thread knowing that some people would flame him for not hating the current 40k system.

Second, I agree with you. I have played every edition of 40K since RT, and each has it's pluses and minuses but the game continues to be fun. I was a GW Outrider for several years back when they had such a thing, and I can't even count how many demos I did of 40K, WFB, Epic, BFG, Necromunda and on and on. Some of the demos were official with some minor compensation from GW, and some were systems GW didn't support through the Outrider program so they were strictly gratis on my part as I loaned new players my own armies to play demo games with. (I won't even tell you how old I am)

I'm sure this disclosure will prompt some people to flame me as a GW-lover.

Are there things in the rules I don't like . . . for sure. Will there always be things I disagree with . . . probably. Are there some armies that I hate, and I mean HATE . . absolutely. Necrons for example. Mindless, soulless, evil machines that just won't die! It just makes every victory that much sweeter.

But the game, the universe, the background, everything, is by far the most elaborate and compelling of any game ever created and I would be very surprised if anyone ever outdoes it. We play the games, we read the books, we have the posters on the walls, we collect the art.

But that's no reason to play it if it pisses you off every time you play. Bottom line, if you think War Machine or some other game is better, then go for it. Enjoy. Have fun. I have just expressed my opinion, which after all, is all any of us are doing on this site.

As for me and my house, we will all probably play 40K and the WH family of games until we're too old to stand next to the table and roll the dice.

[Stonerhino]

I think this mainly stems from people's idea that the game should be fair. As in, in a vaccum (no tactical advantage to either side) then 300 points from one army should be exactly as effective as 300 points from any other army. Which is just not the case; Real world or 40k. I know there are no points in the real world but it's still the same idea.

Then they try to change the game to achieve this realistically impossible idea. Normally under the guise of "Adding tactical options" or "Balance". Something the game as it is, is not lacking. Granted it is a roshambo balance but then so is the real world.

[ReveredChaplainDrake]

"The most important rule then is that rules aren't all that important! So long as both players agree, you can treat them as sacrosanct or mere guidelines - the choice is entirely yours." -BRB (emphasis mine)

Both players must first agree that the rules are not important. Until such point as you secure agreement from your opponent, then yes, the rules are important. (Also, IIRC, didn't the MIR used to include something about having fun?)

Of course rules are important. GW basically uses the MIR as an excuse to never playtest anything. The next time somebody tells you the rules aren't important, try cheating.

[sakura_ninja]

I think players agreeing is pretty much high up in the blindingly obvious column, hence why I didn't mention it.

But then when did both players have to agree for someone to play grey knights, I certainly would never agree to a game versus the most stupid, boring, pointless armies to post against
"oh goody purifier spam...I am so happy and excited...oh the joy...yay................."

[Grocklock]

As has been stated before, if you want to change the rules go ahead, ther game is yours but be aware others maynot agree with your changes, the thing about the rules is evey one has access to them so eveyone knows what they are and where they stand, is GW perfect no but they nor anyone else clams they are but it is a dam good game, that has given alot of fun to a whole lot of people

Thank you Gw

[sakura_ninja]

Hell I never claimed any system was perfect, the difference is for example a system like black powder which is a great system was made better by the entire community making changes and warlord putting those changes in future books.

But 40k players demand changes, don't do anything to solve it, can never agree on anything and so nothing gets fixed.

I guess historical players are just plain better and more mature and grown up to just do what needs to be done.

[yabbadabba]

GW basically uses the MIR as an excuse to never playtest anything.

Of course they do. Its the first thing on the business brief, every time.