Hello All,
As the dust from the 10th ed launch starts to settle, I am sure you are wondering what our thoughts are on the community faq/ Aeldari bans at some major events. The Warp Forge and I have teamed up to each take a side on the issue and would love your thoughts:
Proposed: The community taking it upon themselves to ban certain armies or issue their own FAQs is a good thing for Warhammer 40k.
For: Lord Paddington
I think it’s easy to underestimate how vital the player community has been in shaping the competitive, and wider, landscape of 40k. Many of the rules we came to know and love (detachment limits, terrain blocking LoS, etc.) were originated by the old ITC circuits and built on player feedback. Thus, when it comes to the idea of tournament organizers banning certain armies, or modifying their rules I tend to support them. For my argument, I will cite several reasons why these actions are not only understandable but actually beneficial to the wider 40k community.
The first thing to note is that people are free to organize a tournament in any way that they see fit. There is no centralized cabal of tournament organizers that will send the Pinkertons around for wildcat events. If a certain group isn’t representing the will of the players, then those disaffected players should hold their own events. I heard some people joke that they would ban all non-Death Guard armies as they were all broken in comparison. While it may be unfortunate that the largest events in Germany will ban Eldar, it is not difficult to organize an event that generates ITC points. This decentralized nature of tournament organization is good because it allows players to vote with their feet if they aren’t happy. We aren’t beholden to GW for our competitive events which means we have more say in how they are conducted.
Speaking of GW, I feel there is little better way of provoking change from an organization than organizing a boycott. While we don’t know for certain, a similar ban enacted by the German TOs (the Madagascar to the competitive world’s Pandemic II game virus) may have been the tipping point forcing GW to rework the Leagues of Votann. I feel many players have misplaced their anger here. When a company screws up and suffers consumer blowback, you don’t get mad at the organization flagging that error. No one who has had a recall for their tv or other device complains that “Oh great, there is a recall notice for my TV, time to blame the Consumer Protection Safety Commission!!”
While some of the criticism has been overblown about Warhammer 40k 10th edition there are some fairly glaring issues and indicators that the release was rushed or massively changed shortly before launch. Without collective action, players don’t have much recourse to force GW to fix their game. We can have discussions about what is a wise form of this collective action. It is true that the game hasn’t even been out a week, although we have known about these issues almost immediately. The fact remains that if we want GW to be proactive about regularly balancing and patching their games, we have to hold to aggressively hold them accountable.
Against: The Warp Forge
Arguing against the Community FAQ’s
Hey folks, Warp here! So I’ll be honest I’m gonna find this one a difficult one to argue against but
that’s because recently I went to a local 500pt tourney as my first games towards 10E bringing my
CSM. I’d say I brought a hard list, some possessed, some Oblits, a MoP and squad of traitor Guard.
My first game was up against a Waithknight and I tell ya, 18 mortal wounds on average with those
Fate Dice is something else but I’ll give it my best shot with 2 simple points!
GW Needs the Data
We are not the play testers; we are the players I fully comprehend that. It shouldn’t be upto us to
“fix” GW’s game, especially at launch but were also talking about GW here. With every game there
will always be holes in the rules but the severity of said hole is what we need to hold to account
here. Unfortunetly for us GW doesn’t like being fully transparent with how it gets its results and even
with their Meta watch articles it’s always vague at where they get their results and GW is notoriously
hard at getting them to be transparent. The best we can do is just play the game find the ground-
breaking things and let them soak up that reality-slap so we can eventually find what we all know in
the FAQs. If we modify the variables, we then skew their results which may impact and prolong those
changes we want to see.
Metas gonna meta
So, here’s the honest borderline truth here. Meta is always gonna meta. Its historical fact that when
GW will FAQ something the meta always finds the next thing to break and then were back to the next
cycle of demanding those instant GW changes. Look at 8E and 9E. It’s the same ever-perpetual cycle
of finding something to break and seeing it on the top tables, so what change are we really making
here? What do we want nerfed so the next thing that comes along will have effectively the same
level of salt-inducing infuriation to come next? I think the main biggest debate and conversation
shouldn’t be what can we fix/break but maybe we need to have the conversation if GWs issue is
more deep-rooted? Could it be that GW has an issue and correlation with speed of aggression Vs.
Agency within the game? Do we demand these changes so we can find the next thing to break or are
we looking to have agency for our units for more than the first turn? Why do we want these changes
fixed in the first place? I believe that’s where the diversity of opinion ranges here.
And remember, Frontline Gaming sells gaming products at a discount, every day in their webcart!
