Hey everyone, Reece and Frankie reporting from Valhalla again!
So, the internet is still really bad and inconsistent, we have trouble getting online at all and can’t load much. Podcasts will be on hold until Sunday.
Valhalla itself is really cool. Very relaxing, lots of gsming , great food, and cool people to talk to.
However, we wanted to talk about some of the 40k talk of 7th and the unbound style of play everyone is talking about. For now, we don’t know much, but what we have seen is pretty wild. Potentially no FoC? That means unlimtitted potential for freedom in list building as well as unlimited room for breaking the game. My prediction now, without more facts, is that that style of play will probably be reserved for casual and narrative gaming, or for specialist tournaments like Ard Boyz.
For casual play, it would be awesome to take an army of all named characters in an X-Men style list against a buddy who had an army of cannon fodder and a named villain to have a fun, themed game. In a tournament? Not so much.
So, until we have more info, there’s not Much to say, really. We’ll have to wait and see. But I predict that it won’t be that bad and that tournaments will still go strong with house rules to curb the crazy stuff as we always have done.
What are you all thinking about it?
The optimist in me thinks this could be be a good thing for the game. Get all the rules needed to play any type of game — whether its a narrative campaign, megabattle pickup game, or tournament, etc — all in one place. No more this is core, this is supplement. Let the player base decide how to structure their games. That then frees up supplements for cool stuff like environments, campaigns, tournament play, etc.
The pragmatist in me thinks it’s an obvious removal of any barriers that prevent people from buying more kits. The average gamer purchases based off the FOC used in non-apoc 40k — anything like buying 6 predators or a baneblade would be rare. Thus rolling Apocalypse into standard games (which is what Escalation and Unbound does) makes financial sense. Its logical and could very well make them more money if done right.
The pessimist in me thinks it will be done poorly by GW and require TOs to make a lot of tough decisions. It will also fracture the community even more into camps of ‘play it all’ vs no unbound, vs no Lords of War, etc.
Yeah, it’s a bit of a mess right now, but, I hope that we will get it worked out with the new edition.
I am looking forward to it, the FoC was on the cusp of extinction anyhow, it’s just that armies that had supplements or wanted allies could break them, while others had to drudge on (I personally love “pure” armies, my CSM are even split between their respective gods).
Maybe to Unbound lists will suffer from actual unit restrictions 1-2 where as Bound lists could potentially load their FoC with 3 of the same unit…
I don’t think this will do much, my larger concern is what they do with the PsyPhase… With It moving to a Fantasy/2nd Ed (depending on age) format I hope they keep it controlled.
What I mean is I find the strength of Fantasies BRB Spells to boarder on absurd (depending on Lore of course), so much so as to be capable of dictating the efficiency of an army, the d6+ ML of dice seems like a solid mechanic as it will take a large portion of the randomness from the PsyPhase whereas Magic can be prepostosterously fickle.
The living objectives sound absolutely bangarang, the example in the WD of a Hive Tyrant bein worth 4 mother loving victory points sounds harsh… Never would a man regret bringing a Flyrant to do all his dirty work more, instantly losing its throw away status.
Valhalla sounds amazing, I hope to one day trick my wife into letting me go…
May the gods only give you 6’s!
Yeah, the Psychic Phase is another big one. I should have mentioned that in the article, actually. Magic in Fantasy is too much, IMO. I hope they tone it down a hair. I also hope it is not much like Fantasy’s at all, really, aside form the basics.
Changing missions during the game? Mmmm, we’ll see about that. I think tournaments will in all likelihood just use their own missions, anyway as always.
I think most tournaments will just do battle forged lists, and friendly games will do fun stuff (I can’t wait to do a harlequin army).
Yeah, good point. In for fun lists you can go crazy and do whatever you like!
I’m looking forward to this as well. I’m sure there will be ways to break both formats no matter what the rules are. But at the moment any further soothsaying or speculating feels unnecessary. The chips will fall where they may and we can pick up the pieces after. This may put me in the optimist camp but really adapting and overcoming is nothing new for this hobby so “Keep calm and Game on!”
Good attitude =)
The thing is, That little Xmen thing, What was stopping me before? I could go up to you “Hey want to have a stupid game with no tactical bearing for fun where i used nothing but named and you have thousands or orks” Why did unbound nee to be a thing. Hell when the nids came out, the BR in the WD was nothing but MC, no troops
Yeah, on the surface it makes it sound like it will be easier to distinguish what type of event your having. Its a fun time to be coming back to the game actually…haha coincidentally Im one of those guys that started 2e as a 13-year-old saving up his summer-job money for blisters of marines…so much of these rumors make sense to me from what I grew up with ‘being 40K’
Yeah man, I know exactly what your saying.
With the “return” to 2nd elements I seriously think the new Box will be BA and Orks, far too iconic.
Truly the people who are more concerned with this are the ones who IMO would like a return to 3-4 when Gee-Dubbyah was deep in the throes of bleaching armies of flavour… I believe that’s how it went anyhow… My brains they suffer frum de all de timerz (if you drinkin’ and’a smokin’ all da’time… You gunna gets all da timerz)
To me there will most certainly be some restrictions, be it through the objectives or scenarios but never, ever, ever-ever will it be through common courtesy nor human decency. We need someone to explicitly tell us how to act in such a way.
I totally agree. I 100% understand the desire to get a nice balanced ruleset to be used for competitive play…its not where I personally get the most satisfaction from the game, but I absolutely get it. Its just tough to walk that line of flavor vs pure balance.
Theres lots of examples of games that streamline and update rules for balance and suddenly find themselves missing that little spark that captivated people in the first place (D&D is a good example for alot of people). I know comparisons to Magic the Gathering are often made in talking about a competitive ruleset with bans etc…the only problem is that you still need to make concessions if you’re going to be a competitive MtG player…ie, theres an definite element of pay to play (given the collectible nature), very little ‘storyline’ to care about (the cards have very little use for names…most are referred to by effect only) and you may as well get used to playing blue if you want to compete (hehe…partial jest, but only somewhat). I guess thats a long-winded way of saying “damn, theyve got an impossible taks of pleasing everyone.”
I think maybe its ok if competitive 40k is a community-based ruleset in the same way Magic (to use the analogy myself) structures tourneys.
Legacy = ‘Unbound’ Standard = battle forged Modern = the holy grail of TOs agreeing on a tourney set (call it CFK for Competitive 40-K or something)…for example
My fear is that Unbound is being dismissed before we even know what it does.
We’ll have to see the rules first, of course, but on the surface it sounds terrible for any type of competition.
I am looking forward to seventh edition (lucky #) and TBH I haven’t had much problems with sixth. I think the internet is at fault for a lot of the perceived problems.
The deathstars were legitimate problems, as were a lot of the other issues in the game. I think 6th was largely fine, but it needs a facelift of some sort.
I think a fantasy style magic minigame in every player turn will slow the game down too much. 40k is not a quick game as it is.
If most armies can summon bloodthirsters chaos players and fluff bunnies will be super pissed!
If that’s the case (that it slows it down even more), then it will provide more impetus to run 1500-1750 point games (in tournaments). On the other hand, MAYBE it will be reasonably fast? “I want to cast X power with Y dice.” “Ok, I will use Z dice to deny it.” “Oh look, I turned into a Bloodthirster…” Or something.
Yeah, summon a Bloodthirster to the game for anyone? Lame.
We’re starting to get to the point where we’re going to be using more house rules than rules as written.
can’t complain about that. I’d much rather have a fun, fair house ruled game than to just keep praying that one day games workshop will actually make fair and fun rules for the armies it doesn’t care much about. (I play Sisters and DoA Blood Angels)
Yeah, that’s how I look at it. We’ll house rule what doesn’t work, as always.
Reecius you have to roll a triple six to summons a greater daemon. We all know WD batreps total horse hockey. It’s something that will rarely ever occur.
If you can dispel enemy blessings and the ally matrix is tightened up then that will be the end of BeaStar, JSC and ScreamerStar.
“you have to roll a triple six to summons a greater daemon.”
Source? Or just speculation?
Fair enough. And, you could always sub the GD for a Primarch model or something. We’ll just have to wait and see.
It will all depend on the missions.
It is possible to make missions, so that an unbound FOC doesn’t make any difference, because you will lose with a spam army.
It is possible… I’m optimistic. Hope dies last. 😛
I like your optimism.
Sure we are welcome to use or not use the idea of “unbound” army lists and that for competitive purposes most TOs will likely exclude unbound lists. My concern comes from GWs recent track record of throwing out the baby with the bathwater (and by baby I mean balance between armies and within armies as well as balanced rules; a la Battle Brothers shenanigans) in order to allow players to use (buy and use) whatever the F&*K they want when playing with their mates in a friendly battle over brews in the garage.
So what now rests in the balance is what this “unbound” options means for the REST of the codex. Option one is that they are realizing that there are two camps of players and are trying to play to both by giving the option of playing with whatever you want with no regard for balance and relying on social pressure to prevent douchery. They clean up the rules for balance overall and by creating a bright line standard like “unbound” give something for the competitive community to clearly exclude without dealing with cries of favoritism or argument of what is OP and what is not while letting the FTN player still go balls to the wall crazy.
Option two is that “unbound” is a snapshot of the rest of the book and it means they are completely doing away with any semblance of balance within the game and the REST OF THE RULES set will reflect that as well (wildly crazy psyker phases where the game is won or lost on a single roll on turn 1 or turn 5, or where you go big or go home, rules that contribute to big rock paper scissors match ups, etc).
I’ll say, that its not a sky is falling view to be concerned with the new rules set and what this leak means. The sky has clearly BEEN falling for the past 6+ months with goofy releases and lack of balance issues creating a horribly stale and unfun competitive (note focus on comeptitive, you can do whatever you want and just not play with douches in friendly games) meta. GWs recent history is adding to trepidation, espcially when we think that this leak is clearly a departure from the FoC which has helped keep a lid on balance for decades. What does it mean for the REST of the rules is what the issue is. I’m hoping for a tighter rules set and an understanding that there are a variety of types of people that play this game and that GW is trying to create something that work sfo rall of them.
All we can do is wait and see….