Question about game vs. Firespear

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

Honestly, it's a self-regulating system. Play by the rules we're given, and the standouts will reveal themselves through competitive tournament play. Too many people these days are trying to decide what will be the most powerful stuff/combinations before they're ever used, and limiting them, only to make something else super powerful in the next codex that's released because they didn't know GWs intentions. Example: Games ban wraithknights without banning other gargantuan creatures, then suddenly Tau get a gargantuan creature that can be taken in units of 3, bypassing many tourny rules that limited you to 1 LoW.(A unit of 3 is technically still 1 LoW)

Eldar came out with ranged D on platforms that were all highly vulnerable to assault(except wraithknights), and people threw a fit. They banned ranged D-weapons before they ever had a chance to play against them, or really consider their impact.

With a year of ranged D-weapons under our belts, I can easily say that I think D-weapons can be a useful if expensive tool in a meta filled with gargantuan creatures, but they're a very expensive tool that comes on a platform with a built-in weakness, except in the case of wraithknights. I'm of the opinion that grav weapons are far and away more cost effective, and more effective across a wider range of targets than the D-weapons are.

Basically, I don't think GW is as asleep at the wheel as many TOs and people in the community seem to think they are. Give them a tiny bit of wiggle room, and we'll see the rules tighten up as new books are released. And hopefully they make good on the batch of FAQs they promised us a few weeks ago.

I couldn't agree more - it's something I've said before elsewhere that as soon as you start imposing 'arbitrary' restrictions on something you have to examine all the potential consequences of that. As you've noted, banning some models means that inevitably something else becomes super powerful. Ranged D in itself naturally limits the number of superheavies an opponent is likely to take in case they come up against it, whilst the obvious counter to ranged D is to bring lots of small units that can swamp them with targets.

I'm running a charity event myself this summer and I've tried to avoid imposing too many restrictions. The only thing i've said is each army must belong to a single faction, and forgeworld/superheavy type models (incl gargantuans) will be limited to one, so there will be no forgeworld superheavies as they would count as two choices.

I'm not a fan of the idea of limiting people's armies to 1 faction. That seems like a relic of the past, and unlike space marines, I'm not a fan of relics. It should stay in the past.

Like a local friendly game around here has an older guy running it that doesn't really keep up with the rules much, and doesn't really want to hear about them either, and he runs a game that requires at least 1 HQ and 2 troop choices. People who play harlies or inquisition can't even show up by his rules. When people questioned one of the house rules about why flyers couldn't be used in a game, he said, "It's too foggy." That's a relic, much like this is. If I have a small army made up of 2 allies that together equals 1850 points or whatever your points value is, then your rules would be excluding me by not allowing me to run the army I own that is perfectly within the rules to play without me spending potentially hundreds of dollars to meet your rules alterations.

But hey, maybe they dig that around there.

BetrayTheWorld wrote:

I'm not a fan of the idea of limiting people's armies to 1 faction. That seems like a relic of the past, and unlike space marines, I'm not a fan of relics. It should stay in the past.

Limitation to 1 faction also screws over armies that have been adversely affected by codex creep (like, say, Dark Eldar ), as it disallows weaker armies from taking some stronger assets to level the playing field.

Well it is a charity event, and intended to avoid some of the more hardcore lists you see at competitive tournaments. Single faction lists seems to be the preferred option of those who've registered interest for the event - I specifically set up some polls for the participants so I can ensure that the event is as close as possible to what the people taking part want to play.

I do get where you're coming from though, I was resistant to maelstrom missions at first, partly (in hindsight) because I was more used to playing eternal war, and partly because my first experience was a very unbalanced game where my opponent drew all the objectives he happened to already be holding whilst I kept drawing cards that were very difficult for me to achieve, and I got hammered.

It's a double edged sword I think, because yes it does prevent some armies from taking strong allies to support them, but it also stops armies like Eldar from becoming even more powerful by taking raider transports etc.

Maelstrom missions are a bit different. It's an alternative option, not a replacement for eternal war. It's also just not put together well. It makes things too random in an already randomized game.

Most major tournaments that implement a system similar to maelstrom mitigate the randomness by using a standardized set of 6 objectives, of which both players roll on the the chart to see what they get each game turn. Most of the time, you roll 2 dice on the chart for 2 objectives. The ITC changed their rules this year to allow rolling 3 dice and you pick 2 each turn, thereby further mitigating the randomness of it.

Maelstrom is ok when done in this way. It's actually pretty bad in the way GW made it, but GW was actively sabotaging it's own system's viability for competitive play under the last CEO. They're moving in a much better direction now, but they're too invested in maelstrom to drop it, so I expect maelstrom missions to get a major overhaul in how they're dealt with next edition.

I've very little experience with ITC, though I think all maelstrom needs is a little tweak, which allows you to discard up to 6 cards from your deck before the game starts, including removal of objectives that aren't possible based on the starting lists.