Compendium Scrolls - The Great Debate

[wayniac]

27 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Please elaborate on why the retail abailability of models causes your gaming to suck or not suck.

 

I believe it comes from the idea that a competitive game needs to have an even chance for everyone to be on equal footing.  There are a variety of armies one can pick, but you need to assume that any army is available to any person at a tournament level.  Having an army that's seen as very strong but not commercially available (e.g. Tomb Kings) poses a dilemma because not everyone has access to Tomb Kings models, so someone who has an old collection (or a lot of money to spend on eBay) is at a strong advantage.

It breaks down a competitive game, because everyone is no longer on assumed equal footing; someone who collected Tomb Kings in 8th now has marked advantage over someone starting fresh, because they have a collection that isn't readily available anymore.

David Sirlin explains this in his book "Playing to Win:

Quote

I recommend a game that allows all players to start with equal materials and advantages. For example, a fighting game allows players to start with different characters, but all players are free to choose any character they like before the match begins. Magic: The Gathering is a card game that allows players to bring different decks to a tournament, but assuming all players have equal access to all cards beforehand (which you must assume at the tournament level of play), then anyone could have brought any deck.

Having an army that is no longer available to buy, but still able to be used, isn't equal access.

[Ollie Grimwood]

You're correct. He took them purely to try to prove a point. However he failed in making any point. Russ is an excellent player and wins many tournaments,  regardless of what he uses. He's known for winning with many armies.
IF in the other hand we'd seen a relative unknown, or even a competitive player with a low success rate suddenly take them and win, then that would have made a good point.
But in fact that has and hasn't already happened. Plenty of unknowns took TK to recent events and didn't finish any higher.

Well I'd let him comment on exactly how it worked out, although we wouldn't have had an unknown or player with a poor success rate at the UK Masters.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Blish]

4 hours ago, Bosmer Nightblade said:

Is it jealousy...

It is honestly hard for me to believe that you are serious.

If I was a competitive player, I'd want a vibrant scene with new players and awesome new models. Not a bunch of cranky old-timers dusting off museum pieces and laughing when they stomp new players who may not be able to compete due to model availability.

I love my compendium army. But they aren't Age of Sigmar models, and I see no reason why tournaments should allow it.

[wayniac]

6 minutes ago, Blish said:

It is honestly hard for me to believe that you are serious.

If I was a competitive player, I'd want a vibrant scene with new players and awesome new models. Not a bunch of cranky old-timers dusting off museum pieces and laughing when they stomp new players who may not be able to compete due to model availability.

I love my compendium army. But they aren't Age of Sigmar models, and I see no reason why tournaments should allow it.

This is, I think, something that resonated with me from the video.  For the longterm health of the game, GW needs to show AOS as its own game, and not the successor to Warhammer Fantasy.  The old aesthetics of models were fine in Warhammer Fantasy, but they are out of place in Age of Sigmar.  The new models look like they fit into a fantastic world where you literally have realms of magic that can have anything imaginable; the old ones look decidedly Old World style, which while there's nothing wrong with, it doesn't look like it fits into AoS.

By the same token, IMHO GW needs to come out with rules for playing in various realms, and terrain or battlemats to match, so you aren't always playing over the same boring board with the Arcanabulum or whatever that clockwork thing on the Shattered Dominion board is and the bridge over a chasm, with Ophidian Archways and Occulum Whatchamacallit and Realmgates and Dragonfate Daises and Khorne castles on it.  The mortal realms are weird, fantastic places and that is freaking cool, to have a game that takes place on a floating island, or a desolate wasteland, or a vast forest (in fact when I describe the Mortal Realms to people, I basically describe it as Outland from World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade).  Right now, none of that is really conveyed except with the models that look like they belong in a high fantasy magical realm, not a more traditional world with historical roots like Warhammer Fantasy was.

[amysrevenge]

Before we go all crazy here...

GW has, so far, had 3 chances to remove things they don't want from the game.  The release of the initial Compendiums, the consolidation into Grand Alliance books, and the General's Handbook.  Let's look for any cases where they "obsoleted" (to borrow a term from my engineering work) any warscrolls.

Hmmm...

Looking...

No, I don't seem to find any.  There's pretty much zero precedent for anything being removed from AoS once it was introduced.  There have been replacements (the Savage Orruk Big Boss has has 3 different warscrolls so far), but the only case I can see is an actual re-add of the Dwarf Lord on Shieldbearers in the GHB that was eliminated when the Dwarf Lord warscroll was replaced in GA: Order by the Warden King.

So, in all my searching, the only example I can find of any actual GW action is actually the OPPOSITE of deleting a warscroll, it was re-admitting a replaced warscroll.

And people have been saying that things would be removed any day now for months.  Four GA books come out - "GW will surely be dropping anything that didn't make the cut", no drop.  GHB comes out - "Surely there won't be points for the old compendium stuff, it'll finally be gone", it's all in there.  GHB2 on its way - "OK, this time for really real they're going to drop all that old stuff", what exactly in the history of AoS makes that seem remotely likely?

[Bimli]

14 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

Before we go all crazy here...

GW has, so far, had 3 chances to remove things they don't want from the game.  The release of the initial Compendiums, the consolidation into Grand Alliance books, and the General's Handbook.  Let's look for any cases where they "obsoleted" (to borrow a term from my engineering work) any warscrolls.

Hmmm...

Looking...

No, I don't seem to find any.  There's pretty much zero precedent for anything being removed from AoS once it was introduced.  There have been replacements (the Savage Orruk Big Boss has has 3 different warscrolls so far), but the only case I can see is an actual re-add of the Dwarf Lord on Shieldbearers in the GHB that was eliminated when the Dwarf Lord warscroll was replaced in GA: Order by the Warden King.

So, in all my searching, the only example I can find of any actual GW action is actually the OPPOSITE of deleting a warscroll, it was re-admitting a replaced warscroll.

And people have been saying that things would be removed any day now for months.  Four GA books come out - "GW will surely be dropping anything that didn't make the cut", no drop.  GHB comes out - "Surely there won't be points for the old compendium stuff, it'll finally be gone", it's all in there.  GHB2 on its way - "OK, this time for really real they're going to drop all that old stuff", what exactly in the history of AoS makes that seem remotely likely?

DEATH TO THE FALSE EMPEROR  just had to don't know why but it felt like the right thing to do!

[Sleboda]

37 minutes ago, Blish said:

It is honestly hard for me to believe that you are serious.

If I was a competitive player, I'd want a vibrant scene with new players and awesome new models. Not a bunch of cranky old-timers dusting off museum pieces and laughing when they stomp new players who may not be able to compete due to model availability.

I love my compendium army. But they aren't Age of Sigmar models, and I see no reason why tournaments should allow it.

What is your manufacturing date cutoff for models that meet your personal requirements for visual appeal as it relates to permission to be played?

Also, what are the maximum age and years of experience you would deign to compete against? 

[Blish]

@Sleboda You don't need my permission to play. You are fine. I just wouldn't have much fun playing competitively against you, and I understand why some tournament players want compendium models banned. But, to try and answer your question, I'd say the cut off would be for models whose rules solely exist in compendium pdfs released to placate legacy players.

And I don't understand the relevancy of your second question.

[Sleboda]

So, it's really presence in Compendium, not the 'AoS look' that matters.  Cuz those Empire state troops models are really old and sure don't fit the AoS look of newer releases.  Ok.

The second part was in reference to your desire to not play old-timers.

You *appeared* to only want to play against 20-somethings who use Stormcast armies. (As a blanket overstatement ☺)

[Blish]

@Sleboda I am having a hard time keeping up with what you are on about. It is the availability of the models that is the real issue here. They are Warhammer Fantasy Battle models given Age of Sigmar rules initially but no longer supporter by the manufacturer.  

My issue with "cranky old-timers dusting off museum pieces" is more about their museum pieces than their age.

I don't know if you are being deliberately obtuse, but I know you know what I mean. Your mind is made up. I've said my piece. Imma bounce from this thread. 

[Sleboda]

Fire and forget. Wow, we really are going back to old days.

I would love to further engage in order to try to understand your (combative and arbitrarily exclusive) view, but you seem disinclined to have that conversation, as is the norm for anonymous screen name interwebz kids these days.   I tell ya, in my day ...

[Kaleb Daark]

1 hour ago, Blish said:

It is honestly hard for me to believe that you are serious.

If I was a competitive player, I'd want a vibrant scene with new players and awesome new models. Not a bunch of cranky old-timers dusting off museum pieces and laughing when they stomp new players who may not be able to compete due to model availability.

I love my compendium army. But they aren't Age of Sigmar models, and I see no reason why tournaments should allow it.

To an extent yes Blish, but the same can also be said (and I came across this at a throne of skulls) of the player who hasn't bought any miniatures in decades.

For example, the nurgle player who has plague bearers from over 15 years ago and not one plastic new miniature.  These were truly competitive players, they were dusting off museum pieces for a current army, daemons, but they didn't care for new miniatures, they ticked all the boxes - army? -check,  3 colours and basing? - check,  GW miniatures? - check.    They were there to win, not there to impress with the loveliness of their army.

One of the best things that GW did, albeit as a backhanded damage limitation gesture was to say that your existing army could be used.  However right from the beginning the caveat was there, aesthetically they might not sit with the new aesthetic, and they would not be updated or revised, and so in time would fall out of favour.  I don't doubt with the coming battletomes even things like tomb kings compendiums will have a hard time.

Now the Generals handbook has accelerated this somewhat as with matched play points much in the old Warriors of chaos compendium and others is really not that viable anymore, why take X when X current models are cheaper and so much better point for point.

Going back to your reply, there's a lot of models which aren't AoS models, but still exist in some form or another - empire troops being a prime example.  What are you going to do, after banning those people, start banning anything which doesn't have a battletome? 

Tournament organisers have choices to do as they wish.  nothing is official.  The only official line might realistically be seen to be GW's own run tournaments and related events packs. 

Competitive players come in extremes, and I know of many hardened tournament players who didn't care for pretty armies, they just wanted tournament win armies. 3 colours, base and wins.  Why replace what they already had?

 

42 minutes ago, Blish said:

 But, to try and answer your question, I'd say the cut off would be for models whose rules solely exist in compendium pdfs released to placate legacy players.

You forget that all the compendium PDF's came out long before anything else - they were what was required to not start all over again with new player bases - the stormcast were intentionally designed to pull in 40k players interest.

However we do straddle something now - so many models which were and should of just died off in compendiums now exist as part of grand alliances.

Death for instance has nothing new in the post End times AoS age. 

I still play my chaos dwarfs, and until I get a Battletome or campaign from Forgeworld, which is highly unlikely I will keep playing that.

Now, my hellcannons are predundant, but they now count as something else until such time as the models can be bought.

 

SO a question to you..

If a tomb kings player rocked up with a TK army which was beautifully painted and wanted to proxy it as a death army using current warscrolls would you say that this was acceptable?

If you were at a tournament and some guy with a tzeentch army showed up with the latest battletome but most of his army was made up of 1st generation tzeentch models and a metal Lord of Change from Realm of Chaos Lost and the Damned days with only three or four new plastic models because they were not represented at that time with models, would you say this was acceptable?

 A player shows up with a slaves to darkness army which has no battletome, and made up of chaos marauders (pre-AoS models but on a warscroll in GA Chaos) and a forgeworld chaos war mammoth which is on a pre-AoS compendium would you say that this was acceptable?

A death player shows up with his vampire counts army which has no battletome,  but has a slew of forgeworld monsters like a mourngul which like all their models were pre-AoS and put into a compendium, would you be happy for him to play that army?

I'd be interested to read your thoughts on the four scenarios above.

[Blish]

9 minutes ago, Sleboda said:

Fire and forget. Wow, we really are going back to old days.

I would love to further engage in order to try to understand your (combative and arbitrarily exclusive) view, but you seem disinclined to have that conversation, as is the norm for anonymous screen name interwebz kids these days.   I tell ya, in my day ...

I don't know how I can help you. Soz.

[amysrevenge]

You've got some good scenarios there Kaleb.  Ultimately, there is a trivial self-consistent way to be permissive, but there's no consistent way to be restrictive - there will always have to be exceptions or reversals or edge cases.

[Bosmer Nightblade]

4 minutes ago, Kaleb Daark said:

*lengthy dismantling of Bish's argument*

I wouldn't take him so seriously. I wrote one item about jealousy amongst a much larger post, directed at no-one in particular, and he latched right on to that one word, wrote a slightly hostile response and otherwise form a fairly nonsensical position which you've just dismantled.

I can only conclude that 'jealousy' actually hit the nail on the head. Maybe it's a sore point for him?

[Blish]

@Kaleb Daark Those are some interesting scenarios. You have quoted me from a few response posts after being drawn in. My initial point was that I am a casual player who will continue enjoying his compendium army, but I see the point of banning them that some competitive players make, and think that it would suck to play against compendium models in a competitive environment myself. I don't know if you really want me to try and answer those questions, or were just quoting me as a starting conversation starter, but I'll leave them to the more knowledgeable players.

[Blish]

@Bosmer Nightblade I am not jealous of your old and dusty models. I have my own models. They are also old and dusty. I don't think us playing our old dusty models in a competitive environment is good for the game or much fun. My stance on the issue doesn't run much deeper than that. I felt the need to state it though. I do regret chiming in now.

I don't know why you think I am hostile. Someone else also called me combative. That isn't my intention. Sorry if the tone or word choice has offended you.

[amysrevenge]

6 minutes ago, amysrevenge said:

You've got some good scenarios there Kaleb.  Ultimately, there is a trivial self-consistent way to be permissive, but there's no consistent way to be restrictive - there will always have to be exceptions or reversals or edge cases.

I guess to clarify this.

There's no real philosophical argument you can make in favour of restrictions that doesn't have a lengthy list of exceptions.  You can't make a blanket rule, you have to make a unit-by-unit rule.

If the objection is that you don't want to allow OOP models, then you have problems with some but not all Monstrous Arcanum warscrolls (Rogue Idol of Gork is not for sale), and conversely the Compendium-only Dwarf Thane with Battlestandard also from Forgeworld is still available for sale.  Not to mention the seemingly periodic re-opening of the mold cupboard for cast-on-demand services that GW has introduced - do those models count as "available" if you can buy them, for a while?

If the objection is that you don't want old versions of models, you've got the legacy of neckbeards with metal Plaguebearers (not me) and minotaurs Bullgors (raises hand) that you can't eliminate easily.  I mean, my metal Bullgors were all painted in the last 12 months - does that pass a "new hobby" purity test?  My Night Goblins Moonclan Grots were painted 6-7 years ago, but they are "current" models.  Am I meeting the standard?  How do you make a rule for which is OK and which isn't?

If the objection is that you don't want models that haven't been released for AoS, you end up with the uncomfortable situation of temporarily banning things that you eventually have to un-ban (hello, stuff from Island of Blood -> Dawnspire thingy).  And this could happen at the merest whim from GW any time.

It's a difficult and complicated thing, restricting beyond what GW does.

[Ollie Grimwood]

Might be time to leave this one fellas no one is coming across very well

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Bosmer Nightblade]

I think we're ok actually. Some good points coming out at least.

[wayniac]

Really, as said before for me it's about immersion.  The old style of models don't fit from an immersion perspective, because their look is too tied to the old aesthetic.  It's similar in 40k, the old "Space Ork" (early 2nd edition) Ork figures don't look like they fit into 40k anymore, same with the old Tyranids or even old Space Marine models.  I feel like my immersion is shattered when I play against what is clearly old WHFB models like elves, even some Skaven, etc. (although skaven transcend things), because it doesn't feel like the Mortal Realms.  I feel the same way about terrain, though; my GW has the old realm of battle board (with that damned sculpted hill on it) and like old Empire buildings (not sure from what set but like regular human looking buildings) and it just makes the games not feel like it's Age of Sigmar.  

It's a weird feeling.  

[Kyriakin]

What are the newest models, in terms of their release at least, that are currently in the compendium? Is it some of the culled wood elves?

[amysrevenge]

Forsaken, I believe.  Pretty new (came with 8th Ed. WoC book) plastic infantry kit.

[Squirrelmaster]

Tomb King Sphinxes and Necropolis Knights were both 8th ed. additions. Can't remember the date, but I have a feeling it was later than WoC.

[Kyriakin]

The reason I asked is that we are not necessarily talking old models. Just the ones that GW decided not to sell anymore.

However, I will concede that some survivors are awful (e.g. KoS, GUO, harpies, furries, zombies, etc.), while others are iconically bad to the point of being awesome (e.g. black coach, razorgor, etc.).

Obviously I'm only talking about the aesthetic argument here.