If you've followed my blog for the last while you've noticed I focus on the modelling and not the game. I will say that I used to play a lot, like once a week, with my group of friends. We're all around 30 years old without kids so money isn't the deciding factor in our gaming. We've all stopped playing mid way though six edition (gamers since 3rd). For many reasons we felt the game became more 'competitive' and less narrative in that victories were far more one sided, list building became way more important and disparity between lists (especially with allies) became rediculous. While one could say that it is our responsibility to limit the power level of the armies we play, in practice this isn't plausible. I've had many games with strangers that were 'competitive' or 'friendly' and experienced things vastly different than what my interpretation of those two words was.
I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this and how they've fixed it (obviously if you don't think it needs fixing you can't help my group's dilemma). One such option I've heard was to play Highlander (all codex entries are 0-1 essentially) which prevents spamming. I haven't tried it yet but think it's a cool idea though it prevents things like a fluffy Raven Guard army from being built. I don't like the idea of pre-approving your opponents list, but I am turned off by the idea (and experience) of being tabled turn 2 in a friendly game.
Not a whine, I'm looking for legitimate thoughts on how to get my friends back into a universe I've invested countless hours into.
I'm curious if anyone else has experienced this and how they've fixed it (obviously if you don't think it needs fixing you can't help my group's dilemma). One such option I've heard was to play Highlander (all codex entries are 0-1 essentially) which prevents spamming. I haven't tried it yet but think it's a cool idea though it prevents things like a fluffy Raven Guard army from being built. I don't like the idea of pre-approving your opponents list, but I am turned off by the idea (and experience) of being tabled turn 2 in a friendly game.
Not a whine, I'm looking for legitimate thoughts on how to get my friends back into a universe I've invested countless hours into.
Look into the friendly and narrative rulesets used by adepticon, nova, LVO, etc. I always play in these type events at the actual tournaments, and they provide a fun and friendly atmosphere, where painting is judged as important as the actual game.
ReplyDeleteHighlander is nice, but has a critical flaw. It brings deathstars back hardcore. So you can end up facing a completely unfun list just as much as if you were playing normal Cad's.
I'd also look into beer hammer rules, as they encourage drinking, and random objectives, which can seriously hurt players that spam things. but when it comes down to it, it's your group that determines the games more then anything else. We have a guy who brings five flyrants to games around here...
The last game I played was actually a 2v2 with some of the LVO rules but an opponent's Belakor basically took out 1/3 of our army single handed because we couldn't hit it. It's units like that (and the entire psychic phase) that really bother me.
DeleteI agree that it's the group that determines things more and maybe that's the problem. The group wants a fun and relaxed game, but also one where their in-game choices are far more important than anything else. I think that's why we've migrated to board games now which while fun makes me sad. I miss my toy soldiers.
The LVO rules are competitive tournament. The LVO's friendly, or beerhammer rules follow different formats. ITC isn't friendly at all, it's mega competitive :).
DeleteExample from a friendly:
http://www.thediceabide.com/beerhammer-40k/
LVO's friendly:
Unbound, anything goes, but lists were CHECKED prior to being allowed. (ie they had to approve the list, and it had to be fun/fluffy)
Adepticon's Friendly:
http://www.adepticon.org/wpfiles/2015/201540Kfriendly.pdf
You actually got bonus points for bringing less used units!
I like some of those ideas for sure. The bonus for bad units is cool but definitely requires someone to judge what is bad and have that knowledge (obviously they're using a larger sample size). The beerhammer one where you get points by having units do terrible is pretty funny. I'm hoping it's all just cyclic and it works itself out :)
DeleteFriendly also had an announcer, who would shout out things like...if you finished your beer, you can place it on the table as impassable terrain!
DeleteSo smart players (who weren't drunk yet), would place the bottle sideways to completely block tanks from firing. :)
Maybe we should just drive our models around making pew pew noises :)
DeleteI made dakka dakka dakka noises as I flew my deff dread around the GT :)
DeleteThere are lots of possible house rules. At one club I know they often play 1500, one CAD and one other source which can't be the same faction agin, and 5th edition scoring (only troops can score). Makes for an interesting game especially with the Maelstrom objectives. The worst spamming is countered and whilst you can take a deathstar you probably won't win with 6 objectives to score.
ReplyDeleteDo you like the Maelstrom stuff? I tried that once and it seemed like you could spend quite a bit of the game getting no points just because of bad draws. I was quite surprised the maelstrom thing wasn't a faction specific custom built deck. I thought that would be cool with some limits on how many of each card you could take. It would make it less random so that you weren't drawing cards that weren't possible to complete but also couldn't spam the easy ones.
DeleteFrom my limited experience with the maelstrom missions, it's very random. Very mobile forces are a bonus as you will want to hop all over the field to grab points. I'm sure that there are ways to make it better, but from what I've seen it's OK to play just to have a game, but the attempts to make it part of competitions puzzle me.
Delete40K is not, was never, likely never will be balanced. Especially with the blizzard of armies, new units, formations with special rules and combinations, it's pretty impossible. It should be easier with your group of friends, as should be easier to agree on guidelines of whatever stripe, something you should probably hash out together after a few games. A possibility could be army-switching, where after a normal game, you then replay using each other's list, so you get to see from the other side how strong/weak different things can be. Once you see how unfun something is to play against, you should be more willing to tone it down.
ReplyDeleteMy group likes to see other people... which I think is part of the problem ahha. We can make up any rules we want but those don't work in public or other circles. I find 40k (and most things hobby related) play off each other and the more immersed you are the more you want to continue. Maybe we've just grown up and as a whole (not me) are too busy to be so involved.
DeleteThanks for your input. Sadly I think if people aren't having fun, they're not going to commit to playing to learn how to have fun :)
Highlander isn't perfect, but it works pretty well. As Greg stated it won't stop Deathstars but in my experience it does make the game more interesting. As a Chaos Space Marine player, there's nothing worse than seeing my opponent place 2-5 Flying Hive Tyrants....Game over man!
ReplyDeleteMy group have played around with the allies matrix as well. Reducing the Allies Matrix by one (e.g. Battle Brothers become Allies of Convenience and Come the Apocalypse is not allowed) reduces the Stackhammer effect (stacking USR's to create 'super units') and at least makes the armies seem more fitting with the background.
All good ideas! While I think it's always been possible to make lists that can overpower others in any ruleset, now it seems too easy to do so and sometimes not even on purpose.
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