Kazzigum
08-24-2012, 02:55 AM
The Competitive, the Fluffy and Everything
Alright, I asked about the possibility of getting articles published last week and decided upon posting some here to the forums to test the waters before going to the overlords. So, here goes my big toe. It’s my first try, have mercy upon my soul…
The Competitive
Last week Reecius certainly stirred up the hornet’s nest with his article concerning how to iron out the kinks, as he sees them, to the 6th edition 40,000 rules to better suit the tournament scene. I, like many others, was immediately put off by many of the suggestions he presented. Were I to admit the truth to myself, I was simply revolted. Surprised at myself once I realized this, I set to thinking. And not just thinking … serious, deep-down pondering. I mean, why should I care so much? I am not a competitive player as it is generally defined by the gaming public. I like to do well, but I prefer the modeling aspects and the background clearly. So why do I really care what the tournament players, as they called themselves, do with the game at the tournaments? And that’s when it struck me – it’s because I don’t accept the notion that a tournament player is necessarily the same thing as a competitive player.
I’ve been playing Warhammer 40,000 for over twenty years now, since the heady days of Rogue Trader and, even more importantly, Slaves to Darkness and the Lost and the Damned. I’ll regale you with the glory of those days another time perhaps, but the important thing to understand here is that I’ve been playing a long time. Of course, ‘playing’ has a fairly interesting meaning here, as in, not actually playing the actual game much. No, I’ve spent far and away most of those years painting, modeling, tinkering with army lists, reading the novels, reading the rules, reading forums and threads about other people doing all those things, etc. But most of all, I’ve spent most of those years talking to my brother about all these things and more concerning 40K. And I love it. And I know he loves it too. But like all good gamers, our talks often wind their way to those crazy events that occurred during the various games we actually did play. As in, “Dude, you remember that time my three beastmen popped out of that foxhole, took aim at the oncoming space marines with their autoguns, but needed 6s to hit? Then I rolled that triple 6? Yeah, that was awesome.” And it’s a true story – 2nd edition, 40K tournament at Origins the one and only time they held it in San Jose. Honestly, I don’t even remember how many marines went down in that volley, or if I won or lost the game. All I do remember is that it was amazing and cool. But the real point I’m trying to make is this – we didn’t actually play over much, and when we did (do), it was at some tournament or another.
The Fluffy
Obviously, I don’t, and never have, play(ed) as much as most competitive 40K gamers. But I do nevertheless love it every bit as much as any of them – though I’ll leave that discussion for another time as well. Here’s where it gets complicated. I do consider myself a tournament player, because that’s where I’ve played most of the games of 40K that I’ve ever played. Weirdly enough, over the last fifteen years, I’ve rarely played my brother, as he and I have lived in different cities for many years. So why is it weird? Well, it seems that competitive players, who consider themselves tournament players, class me (overall mind you, none have specifically come up to me to do so) as a fluffy player who should have no input into the tournament system. Of course, this is hyperbole to a degree, but not by too much I believe judging by the comments to Reecius’ article. Reecius himself seemed confused by much of the negative feedback regarding some of his ideas and asked what I asked myself at the beginning of this article – if you guys are not tournament players, why do you care? I believe that it is this assumption that is the crux of the problem. Simply put, not all tournament players are competitive players.
As I said, I consider myself a tournament player, but not a competitive player. My brother is the same way. We’ve been to plenty of tournaments over the years – two GTs from back in the day, one Grand Waaaaggghhh, three or four Golden Gargants, the Origins tournament I mentioned earlier and a bunch of lesser tournaments of varying sizes. Probably thirty or forty over the years. Between us, we’ve won exactly zero. In fact, neither of us has won any trophy at all, except sadly enough, that we’ve both won the Dice Don’t Like Me award from two separate Golden Gargants. Him for his horrible, horrible (but super cool) Arbites army a couple years back and me for having Kharn lose in melee to guardsmen back in 3rd or 4th edition (they even stopped the tournament and announced this over the loudspeakers – thanks guys…). Anyway, the point is that I go to lots of tournaments, and it’s not to win. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I don’t just lie down. I try my best to win. But I don’t craft my army to exploit loopholes, use internet lists or otherwise build my army lists to maximize anything but the coolness factor. Oh I don’t go out of my way to use horrible units, and I recognize under/over-costed selections as well as the next guy, but I build my armies to be the cool stuff I want it to be. I spend more time with some of these miniatures than I do my wife at times, so I need to like them.
So if I know I’m not going win, why do I go to these tournaments? This is the question that I think would be directed to me by most competitive players. Indeed, having lurked my way through many a thread on BOLS, I’ve seen this sentiment expressed many times. To be honest, I don’t know that it was specifically expressed in the comments to Reecius’ article, but that is the vibe I walked away from it with. There is a sense from many competitive players that they own the tournament environment and that if you don’t play the way they do, why bother showing up? For the life of me, I can’t understand this attitude. Most people who show up at tournaments lose. If not their individual games, then the tournament itself. Yet, they keep showing up. And many are like me – we never win. Yet we keep showing up. Again, why? Well, for me, it’s because tournaments are NOT about winning.
Let me turn the question a different way. If for you, the competitive gamer, the tournament is all about winning, what happens if you stumble? Seriously. Because in a big tournament, particularly in those where comp. and other factors are minimized, if you lose once, you lose the tournament, or better put, you cannot win. So say you lose your first or second game, well now you know it’s over. You’re out of contention. So how do you enjoy the rest of your games? I’m not saying that’s all competitive gamers, I know some just enjoy playing against the best (best here meaning the most efficient competitive players) to simply test their own mettle. But in my experience, what competitive players fail to see is that most of the tournament participants are not competitive gamers, at least not in the same sense that they are (yes, I am aware that borders on nonsense). Most of the tournament players know they are not going to win, but they come anyway. To game, to meet new people and ogle their armies, to build great stories to reminisce over later and even to just hang out with our brother, who we’ve not seen in a long time.
Everything Else
So having come full circle, why do I care? Well, having pondered this, I think it’s because I realize that in both 4th and 5th edition my tournament attendance dropped (and so, too, my actual number of played games). Looking at the new 6th edition, I realize why. The new edition is to me, and I suspect many others, like what 1st and 2nd edition should have been – reeking of grim-dark cool, but with rules that are not insanely broken or overpowered in a bunch of areas. Take the Deny the Witch rule for example. It scales back the power of psychic abilities with a simple broad stroke, yet at the same time the name itself is so invocative of the setting it’s just stupid cool. I can’t really express just how much I love the little details like this in the new rules. This edition brings back much of the randomness that made the game so cool back then as well, though to be honest, I feel the complaints about much of this, particularly the random charge, is way overblown. But these bits of random are what’s important here. The game cannot be broken down into formulas anymore; you cannot simply know everything will work for you. Sometimes it won’t, and for guys like me, that’s great.
Guys like Reecius, dislike random. He is man enough to admit it, and I give him props for doing so. But contrary to what most competitive players like him believe (at least in my opinion), is that they are very much in the minority, even in the very tournaments they attend. Most of us don’t like terms like ‘mathhammer’ or ‘tabling an opponent,’ we just want to show up and play with at least a chance to win. The changes evident in this edition allow us to do so. Sometimes the dice will favor the foolish and our big gambles will pay off, rewarding us with victory even with an ‘inferior’ list. I know, it happened to me a couple times at the one 6th edition tournament I’ve so far played. It was refreshing.
The competitive crowd doesn’t like 6th and I’m not surprised. But guys like Reecius will adapt. I firmly believe they love 40K too much not to. They won’t simply switch to another system and they’ll find ways to win in 6th – they are too good not to. But perhaps it will be more challenging for them; perhaps others will sometimes win now that did not do so before. More importantly in my view, perhaps others will return to the tournament scene that had given up on it in 4th and 5th. I feel that many are excited about the rules in ways they haven’t been in years and that they will return to the fold and stop just lurking.
To close I would like to reiterate what many already said is response to Reecius’ article – give it time before you change things so drastically. And I’m not talking about the whole changing random charge to random or a base 6” or blah blah blah. I don’t for a minute believe Reecius thought that would fly, he just hates the random charge rule (as he stated numerous times), and floated that one out there in frustration. No, the proposal that disturbed me the most was the lessening of the importance of objectives and tinkering with the base missions to better cater to wider styles of armies. To me, this is completely missing the point of 6th edition. It is obvious that the designers created the missions the way they did specifically to address this very point. They don’t want armies that are poor at capturing objectives, and hence are extreme/maximized armies, to be the norm. It is obvious that they want the basic premise of the game to be about capturing and holding objectives. And that’s fine with me, because most of what curb stomped you by its very existence on the field in previous editions sucks at capturing objectives. It shouldn’t always, even mostly, be about who is more bad *** on the field of battle. Battles rarely are simply about destroying the enemy wholesale, particularly skirmish-size battles as 40K is meant to represent. There is always an objective, and sometimes by pursuing it, the less potent army can still win. This is what the new edition emphasizes and I love it again. Don’t mess with it. Embrace it.
Alright, I asked about the possibility of getting articles published last week and decided upon posting some here to the forums to test the waters before going to the overlords. So, here goes my big toe. It’s my first try, have mercy upon my soul…
The Competitive
Last week Reecius certainly stirred up the hornet’s nest with his article concerning how to iron out the kinks, as he sees them, to the 6th edition 40,000 rules to better suit the tournament scene. I, like many others, was immediately put off by many of the suggestions he presented. Were I to admit the truth to myself, I was simply revolted. Surprised at myself once I realized this, I set to thinking. And not just thinking … serious, deep-down pondering. I mean, why should I care so much? I am not a competitive player as it is generally defined by the gaming public. I like to do well, but I prefer the modeling aspects and the background clearly. So why do I really care what the tournament players, as they called themselves, do with the game at the tournaments? And that’s when it struck me – it’s because I don’t accept the notion that a tournament player is necessarily the same thing as a competitive player.
I’ve been playing Warhammer 40,000 for over twenty years now, since the heady days of Rogue Trader and, even more importantly, Slaves to Darkness and the Lost and the Damned. I’ll regale you with the glory of those days another time perhaps, but the important thing to understand here is that I’ve been playing a long time. Of course, ‘playing’ has a fairly interesting meaning here, as in, not actually playing the actual game much. No, I’ve spent far and away most of those years painting, modeling, tinkering with army lists, reading the novels, reading the rules, reading forums and threads about other people doing all those things, etc. But most of all, I’ve spent most of those years talking to my brother about all these things and more concerning 40K. And I love it. And I know he loves it too. But like all good gamers, our talks often wind their way to those crazy events that occurred during the various games we actually did play. As in, “Dude, you remember that time my three beastmen popped out of that foxhole, took aim at the oncoming space marines with their autoguns, but needed 6s to hit? Then I rolled that triple 6? Yeah, that was awesome.” And it’s a true story – 2nd edition, 40K tournament at Origins the one and only time they held it in San Jose. Honestly, I don’t even remember how many marines went down in that volley, or if I won or lost the game. All I do remember is that it was amazing and cool. But the real point I’m trying to make is this – we didn’t actually play over much, and when we did (do), it was at some tournament or another.
The Fluffy
Obviously, I don’t, and never have, play(ed) as much as most competitive 40K gamers. But I do nevertheless love it every bit as much as any of them – though I’ll leave that discussion for another time as well. Here’s where it gets complicated. I do consider myself a tournament player, because that’s where I’ve played most of the games of 40K that I’ve ever played. Weirdly enough, over the last fifteen years, I’ve rarely played my brother, as he and I have lived in different cities for many years. So why is it weird? Well, it seems that competitive players, who consider themselves tournament players, class me (overall mind you, none have specifically come up to me to do so) as a fluffy player who should have no input into the tournament system. Of course, this is hyperbole to a degree, but not by too much I believe judging by the comments to Reecius’ article. Reecius himself seemed confused by much of the negative feedback regarding some of his ideas and asked what I asked myself at the beginning of this article – if you guys are not tournament players, why do you care? I believe that it is this assumption that is the crux of the problem. Simply put, not all tournament players are competitive players.
As I said, I consider myself a tournament player, but not a competitive player. My brother is the same way. We’ve been to plenty of tournaments over the years – two GTs from back in the day, one Grand Waaaaggghhh, three or four Golden Gargants, the Origins tournament I mentioned earlier and a bunch of lesser tournaments of varying sizes. Probably thirty or forty over the years. Between us, we’ve won exactly zero. In fact, neither of us has won any trophy at all, except sadly enough, that we’ve both won the Dice Don’t Like Me award from two separate Golden Gargants. Him for his horrible, horrible (but super cool) Arbites army a couple years back and me for having Kharn lose in melee to guardsmen back in 3rd or 4th edition (they even stopped the tournament and announced this over the loudspeakers – thanks guys…). Anyway, the point is that I go to lots of tournaments, and it’s not to win. Hey, don’t get me wrong, I don’t just lie down. I try my best to win. But I don’t craft my army to exploit loopholes, use internet lists or otherwise build my army lists to maximize anything but the coolness factor. Oh I don’t go out of my way to use horrible units, and I recognize under/over-costed selections as well as the next guy, but I build my armies to be the cool stuff I want it to be. I spend more time with some of these miniatures than I do my wife at times, so I need to like them.
So if I know I’m not going win, why do I go to these tournaments? This is the question that I think would be directed to me by most competitive players. Indeed, having lurked my way through many a thread on BOLS, I’ve seen this sentiment expressed many times. To be honest, I don’t know that it was specifically expressed in the comments to Reecius’ article, but that is the vibe I walked away from it with. There is a sense from many competitive players that they own the tournament environment and that if you don’t play the way they do, why bother showing up? For the life of me, I can’t understand this attitude. Most people who show up at tournaments lose. If not their individual games, then the tournament itself. Yet, they keep showing up. And many are like me – we never win. Yet we keep showing up. Again, why? Well, for me, it’s because tournaments are NOT about winning.
Let me turn the question a different way. If for you, the competitive gamer, the tournament is all about winning, what happens if you stumble? Seriously. Because in a big tournament, particularly in those where comp. and other factors are minimized, if you lose once, you lose the tournament, or better put, you cannot win. So say you lose your first or second game, well now you know it’s over. You’re out of contention. So how do you enjoy the rest of your games? I’m not saying that’s all competitive gamers, I know some just enjoy playing against the best (best here meaning the most efficient competitive players) to simply test their own mettle. But in my experience, what competitive players fail to see is that most of the tournament participants are not competitive gamers, at least not in the same sense that they are (yes, I am aware that borders on nonsense). Most of the tournament players know they are not going to win, but they come anyway. To game, to meet new people and ogle their armies, to build great stories to reminisce over later and even to just hang out with our brother, who we’ve not seen in a long time.
Everything Else
So having come full circle, why do I care? Well, having pondered this, I think it’s because I realize that in both 4th and 5th edition my tournament attendance dropped (and so, too, my actual number of played games). Looking at the new 6th edition, I realize why. The new edition is to me, and I suspect many others, like what 1st and 2nd edition should have been – reeking of grim-dark cool, but with rules that are not insanely broken or overpowered in a bunch of areas. Take the Deny the Witch rule for example. It scales back the power of psychic abilities with a simple broad stroke, yet at the same time the name itself is so invocative of the setting it’s just stupid cool. I can’t really express just how much I love the little details like this in the new rules. This edition brings back much of the randomness that made the game so cool back then as well, though to be honest, I feel the complaints about much of this, particularly the random charge, is way overblown. But these bits of random are what’s important here. The game cannot be broken down into formulas anymore; you cannot simply know everything will work for you. Sometimes it won’t, and for guys like me, that’s great.
Guys like Reecius, dislike random. He is man enough to admit it, and I give him props for doing so. But contrary to what most competitive players like him believe (at least in my opinion), is that they are very much in the minority, even in the very tournaments they attend. Most of us don’t like terms like ‘mathhammer’ or ‘tabling an opponent,’ we just want to show up and play with at least a chance to win. The changes evident in this edition allow us to do so. Sometimes the dice will favor the foolish and our big gambles will pay off, rewarding us with victory even with an ‘inferior’ list. I know, it happened to me a couple times at the one 6th edition tournament I’ve so far played. It was refreshing.
The competitive crowd doesn’t like 6th and I’m not surprised. But guys like Reecius will adapt. I firmly believe they love 40K too much not to. They won’t simply switch to another system and they’ll find ways to win in 6th – they are too good not to. But perhaps it will be more challenging for them; perhaps others will sometimes win now that did not do so before. More importantly in my view, perhaps others will return to the tournament scene that had given up on it in 4th and 5th. I feel that many are excited about the rules in ways they haven’t been in years and that they will return to the fold and stop just lurking.
To close I would like to reiterate what many already said is response to Reecius’ article – give it time before you change things so drastically. And I’m not talking about the whole changing random charge to random or a base 6” or blah blah blah. I don’t for a minute believe Reecius thought that would fly, he just hates the random charge rule (as he stated numerous times), and floated that one out there in frustration. No, the proposal that disturbed me the most was the lessening of the importance of objectives and tinkering with the base missions to better cater to wider styles of armies. To me, this is completely missing the point of 6th edition. It is obvious that the designers created the missions the way they did specifically to address this very point. They don’t want armies that are poor at capturing objectives, and hence are extreme/maximized armies, to be the norm. It is obvious that they want the basic premise of the game to be about capturing and holding objectives. And that’s fine with me, because most of what curb stomped you by its very existence on the field in previous editions sucks at capturing objectives. It shouldn’t always, even mostly, be about who is more bad *** on the field of battle. Battles rarely are simply about destroying the enemy wholesale, particularly skirmish-size battles as 40K is meant to represent. There is always an objective, and sometimes by pursuing it, the less potent army can still win. This is what the new edition emphasizes and I love it again. Don’t mess with it. Embrace it.