Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Competitive Warhammer is so bad right now

I only play 40K for fun these days. I can't bothered keeping up with the rules, the game is massively imbalanced, tournaments enforce WSIWYG instead of TWNCTAWP (i.e. this would not confuse the average Warhammer player) when it comes to things like having sniper scouts as boltgun scouts, and the game is basically over by the end of turn 2, if not by the end of deployment. The game has also degenerated into rock-paper-scissors. 

Attempts to fix the game to make it more playable are failures in my opinion. Australia's community comp system equally punishes good units in codexes that are otherwise heterogeneous in quality, so the best codexes still dominate, and it's not particularly hard to break (e.g. scouting grav-cannons in Rhinos aren't comped, nor are flyrants with 3 ranged weapons as opposed to 2). Community comp also doesn't make games more fun, only final placings - you can still come up against some dickhead running a '20 credit, double d-thirster, skyhammer, double jetbike farseer, eldar rangers' army that exists to troll people. 

The ITC is overpowered. It makes the game playable to the extent that it removes unbound. But you've still got all the other cheese that makes the game over at deployment sometimes. For example, I recall a major ITC event from last year where a bike army played against Tau-Dar on an open board. The bikes lost the roll to deploy and the roll to scout (which allowed Eldar infiltrators to prevent the bikes from scouting, setting up a bloodbath of Wave Serpent and Riptide on turn 1) and that was the end of the game. Only 2 dice had been rolled. More recently, super-friends can basically field an invincible death star. Super fun. 

What I don't understand is why people don't tell GW to fuck off, notably with regard to formations, which are the most brazen money-making gimmick they have ever come up with. If I was running a competitive 40K league I would have the following rules: 

1. Only 1 CAD; no other detachments and no other formations. 
2. No more than 3 of any one unit
3. No Forgeworld
4. Codexes only

That's it; you're done. This eliminates allies, which you don't need rules for in fun games and that destroy game balance in competitive ones, eliminates spamming of units like (jet)bikes, cuts out all the formation cheese, cuts out all the stupid and thoughtless non-codex relics like eye of the hunter, ensures that people only need a rulebook and their codex and can thus keep up with the game changes, and cuts out ally knights and lame super-heavies. The only weakness of this format is that the better codexes will still dominate (e.g. Eldar right now). But this has always been the case with GW, and could only be fixed by taking the writing of the rules entirely away from the company. If that were to happen, by Frontline Gaming for example, I might venture back into competitive 40K. For now I am working on my Blood Angels army for our annual friendly club tournament, and then I will move to paint all my unpainted stuff. I am not buying any models at least until the next club tournament. Good business model GW.  

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