Hello, fellow Warhammer 40k aficionados LVO Senior Judge, SaltyJohn, here to discuss everyone taking a step back for a minute.
If you’re reading one of my articles chances are you came to it from a link having to do with competitive 40k because that’s generally all I write about. Prior to the COVID-19 Pandemic, I wrote a weekly article about the standings in the ITC for a little over 2 seasons. I took a hiatus from that for obvious reasons but decided to come back to you now at the coming of 9th edition to implore everyone to relax. I know, it’s an odd stance coming from a guy who makes outrageous salt fueled memes and is known for the “rant” schtick on TFG Radio. Yet, here we are.
You’ve no doubt seen the 40k 9th edition Grand Tournament missions and packet. It is partial by the way. You also probably saw some of the vitriol over them on Facebook, Reddit, maybe even DakkaDakka (is that still a thing? I don’t want to try logging in to find out so someone let me know in the comments). You may have even found something about it on *checks terrible 40k memes from last week* Pinterest? That can’t be right. Anyway, there is a lot going on out there around the new GT missions from GamesWorkshop in 9th edition and it’s important some of this gets addressed in a calm and reasonable manner. So naturally, it fell to… me?
So there are a few issues combining to create the vitriol we’re seeing on this topic and I want to go through each of them. Firstly the GW teasers and release. It’s safe to say consumer confidence in GW is not high right now. The constant drip drip drip of out of context rules over the course of months of hype, followed by a botched Indomitus release has many people confused over the rules and mad about their models. Not a good combination. That said, and remember I made a ton of memes and ranted about the Indomitus debacle at length, allowing anger about Indomitus to spill over into the rules and GT packet isn’t really warranted. The out of context slow rules leaks though are problematic. Rather than create interest and excitement the out of context rules created an ever-increasing amount of anxiety and argument over the rules. Then GW would try to correct it by releasing something else related to the initial rule causing another round of arguments and it would inevitably cause more issues. Why? Well, for the very reason we’re having people freak out over the GT packet. Very few people have seen the actual rules of the game, let alone played it and attempting to analyze rules out of context is not going to yield positive results.
Here is a big problem. Very few people have seen the rules for 9th edition, including the GT packet, in their totality and an even smaller group has actually played it. Yes, there are a lot of leaks out there. Yes, there are a lot of “playtesters” putting out a lot of content to get that sweet YouTube ad revenue. Yes, there are a lot of paywalled articles and podcasts giving people the “scoop” on 9th edition. Have you played it? No, I took the free rules that were published and the leaked bits we’ve seen and played a game of “9th”. Have you actually gotten your hands on the full pantheon of 9th ed rules and played several full games? Has anyone played an actual tournament with the actual new rules? Have we had, as a community, time to play and digest the game competitively? No, again and again, the answer is no. I run a Summer Camp, and routinely the kindergarteners have a difficult time with new things. A not uncommon meltdown is when introducing a new game, say four corners, to them they meltdown at the mention of the name. Not because they don’t like the game, they’ve never played or even heard the rules, but because they don’t like the way the name sounds, or because their friend said they didn’t like it, so they know they won’t like it too. Now, I am not calling you a child if you dislike the missions based on partial information or other’s opinions of them, it’s just an example. This is the problem we’re having with 9th edition though. Opinions are being formed based upon partial information, not real experience, and it’s easy to look at the partial information and perform some tried and true confirmation bias to your worst fears about the direction the game is taking. Even if it’s not true.
That’s the next issue. Our world, particularly online, currently lends itself to hysteria, bias confirmation towards what’s false, and internet mob culture among other things. The 40k community is not safe from these detrimental issues. No matter your social or political alignment it’s obvious that the internet has led to a more divided and less factually informed population. What holds true for society as a whole holds true for our small subculture. So it only makes sense that there would be such a visceral reaction to the partial rules, especially when they run so contrary to what was the norm.
The norm for Competitive 40k has been what the ITC, and Frontline Gaming events, have done for several years now. I remember playing the 4th edition Games Workshop Rogue Trader Tournament missions. Missions like “This is Heavy Doc” where the “gravity” on the battlefield would randomly fluctuate from turn to turn, having a huge impact on the game. I remember the shift to 5th edition and the adoption of BRB style missions for tournaments, playing in the first Bay Area Open with 5th edition style missions. I remember the changes made to certain missions in 6th. I helped write and refine the ITC missions in 7th edition, compiled a massive FAQ for the last Las Vegas Open of 7th edition. I was trusted with the task of rewriting the 7th ed ITC Missions for the first Bay Area Open of 8th edition because the new official ITC Missions, what became the Championship Missions, wouldn’t be ready. I helped to test and write parts of the 8th ed ITC missions, some of the Secondaries added after season 1 were my idea. My point is, the ITC missions were around for a long time and we were used to them. Attached to them even. Letting them go isn’t easy for many in the community. They are safe. They are a known quantity, and we as humans get attached to those types of things. But if I can put them aside and be ready to move on after years of helping mold them into what they were, so can you. They were also the standard by which all mission sets were judged by the end of 8th edition. Which is why they are being used as the standard to measure the 9th edition GW Tournament missions. While tempting to make that comparison there are a few reasons to just let it go.
The GamesWorkshop 9th edition Grand Tournament packet is not going to be the 8th edition ITC Tournament Packet. Nor can you truly hold the two up for a proper comparison. The ITC Missions were not designed with 9th edition in mind, but the new GW missions were. GW also had input from many people in the competitive 40k community when making them. Do I think they are perfect? No, but then again neither were the ITC missions. The complaints about the ITC missions were many and varied, but they were a good set of missions because we as a community used them. They were a standard set. Yes, sometimes they were a solvable equation for certain armies but all missions can be that way. Whether the GW Missions are ultimately better, or worse, than the ITC missions isn’t the point. The point is we all know the ITC missions because we spent years playing them. We’ve spent 0 years and 0 tournaments trying out these new missions, and anyone saying they can “just tell” they’re bad is being disingenuous. Let’s deal with these new missions the same way we dealt with the ITC Missions at their inception; which there was vocal resistance to when they were first introduced. By giving the new GW Missions a chance on a large scale, providing relevant feedback, and helping evolve them into something we can all be happy to play. That’s how we get a set of tournament missions that are going to be a standard set to live by. Not by posting incessantly, deriding a game system and competitive rule set that hasn’t even had a chance to be used on a small scale, let alone on the largest scale of competitive 40k. A Major.
Change represents something that most of us are resistant to. Most people, me included, prefer when things remain somewhat constant. Just look at the response when something as simple as an App icon is changed, or a change is made to a phone/computer/gaming system OS. The initial knee jerk is almost always reluctance and negativity. We’re changing to a new edition of 40k. Things are going to change. The game was designed differently. They took 8th edition and began to mold new terrain rules, recommended layouts, missions, and core rules intrinsically with consideration for each other. That means that 9th is going to be different than 8th in many ways and looking at it through the same lens won’t yield positive results. Your 9th edition lists and strategies will be demonstrably different than those you had in 8th edition. Because you’re not playing 8th edition anymore, you’ll need to adapt and change. Which will be hard initially but it’s necessary, rather than agitating online for an immediate return to 8th.
One more thing. We’re all angry and on edge in some way or another right now. We live in times that are nearly unprecedented in living memory. Many of us have spent weeks, if not months, on end living a minimized life. We’ve been stuck inside, stuck online, stuck in neutral. Even the things we love, like Warhammer 40,000, are little respite from social distancing, cancellations, and the general unease of life right now. Some of what is making us so hysterical about 9th edition might be that we know even once it’s released we won’t have a true test of what it will be like competitively on a large scale for some time. Even worse, we may not get our personal experience with it for an indeterminate amount of time. I understand all the frustrations and anxieties around a new edition of 40k coming out right now in 2020. The fact that one of the biggest changes to competitive 40k is that it’s biggest constant, the ITC Missions, are seemingly going out the door with the old edition only turns those anxieties up a few levels. I wish we lived in other times; I wish we were getting this new edition and its new possibilities under different conditions. I think it would be received completely differently. But that is not our reality, it is out of our control. All we can do is choose to give this edition the chance it deserves, or render the discourse and testing of it intolerable. I beg you to take the flexible and not the intransigent route in this, you may just find you can actually enjoy your hobby after all.
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