Today the guys grab a professional game designer and talk about a potential new edition of 40k and what they want out of it.
Chapter Tactics is a 40k podcast which focuses on promoting better tactical play and situational awareness across all variations of the game.
Show Notes:
- Head on over to 40kstats.com for more faction stats for all major ITC tournaments!
- Support us on Patreon this month and get a chance to receive random stuff from us!
- Click here for a link for information on downloading best coast pairings app where you can find lists for most of the events I mention.
- Check out the last episode of Chapter Tactics here. Or, click here for a link to a full archive of all of our episodes.
- Check out Skari on Skaredcast, for excellent 40k tactics videos and Monday Meta analysis.
- Commercial music by: www.bensound.com
- Intro by: Justin Mahar
GW does have “living” digital rulebooks and codexes (codicies?): the Enhanced Editions through Apple’s Books. You need an iPhone/iPad/MacOS, of course, and for a while they weren’t updated in a timely manner, which sucked, but the last 6 months or so have been pretty great. Both the latest CA and FAQ were pushed to them within the week of release.
I decided to try them out after 8th came and I threw out 5-7 now useless books, which seemed like a waste of resources, and I’m not sorry I did.
I think the commentators here may have misunderstood GW’s goals regarding 40k as a leading competitive game and may have ignored some advances in other GW games.
For GW, 40k is not a competitive esport game. GW already has its “ultimate competitive miniatures game” in Underworlds. That tag line is illustrative of how it views the competitive aspect of 40k. GW sees the competitive aspect of 40k as subordinate to other aspects of the game. As well it should, 40k is unlikely to reach wide-spread appeal as a competitively-focused game. What’s more, GW’s current business strategy has been wildly successful so there’s little need to shake 40k up.
The commentators had some interesting ideas on making the core rules available for free and enabling electronic codices. AoS already has all that, plus free points. And AoS Youtubers preview new Battletomes (read: codices) ahead of release. It’s great! AoS is the future of 40k.
+1
Ultimately, the only way to really solve the problems addressed in the episode for GW and give “competitive players” what they want, while also having a product in their catalog that covers the “lazy-mostly-narrative-6-hours-sunday-afternoon-showing-off-all-your-toys”-aspect would be to offer 2 (or more) separate games.
And the competitive half of that side, taken to the logical conclusion, would ultimately look a lot like Underworlds or Kill Team Arena:
• Game play abstracted more from using the actual physical dimensions of models and terrain, movement, etc.. perhaps by using something like hex-based maps and defined/abstract terrain rules.
• Throwing out custom army construction and presents fixed armies or “warbands”, so game-results are more clearly the result of skill, not list.
• Ideally, they would at the same time try to make this game more e-sport-esque and streamable, greatly reducing the size of the area the game is played on so individual models pop more.
• Reduce play time down to 10-15 minutes, allowing multiple rounds to be played for a better average as well as allowing 6, 10 or 15 round tournament games in a single day.
• Move mechanics and abilities to something like cards, which in turn could be phased in and out with “seasons” or similar mechanics, similar to CCGs, etc. to keep things moving, fresh and exciting in a fast-paced tournament circuit.
And then the other, non-competitive game would end up pretty much like current 40K, embracing the “all toys on the table for a lazy Sunday afternoon”-approach over the necessities of precise tournament-play. Lots of freedom for narrative creativity (both from the model-designers and rule-designers side, as well as from the player side). The ability to throw in all the craziness such as Flyers, Titans, weird Forge World collectors models, etc.. which might conceptually not be the best ideas for a “tightly balanced game”. The ability to play on giant 6×4” tables that are horrible to broadcast in an online environment and giant armies that take upwards of 2-3 hours (or more) to play for an entire game. Etc..