Why I Like Pitched Battles

[Sleboda]

My GF just spent the last 5 hours going through all the army books and coming up with army lists.  I'm about to go through the fan TK book and make 2000 and 2500 point lists for games this weekend. Before the Pitched Battle concept, this part of the hobby would not have been a thing.  My GF is more into the hobby because of the element of list-building. I like Pitched Battles.

:)

[Double Misfire]

I think that they're a great way of playing pickup games against someone new without the fuss of politely figuring out what's fair against someone you don't know very well, and all six batteplans are fantastically written and very challenging with a solid narrative feel to each of them.

Matched play points values are also a great shorthand for a unit or battalion's rough power level in other modes of play (unless that unit is a Beastclaw Raider unit or Kurnoth Hunters, but hey).  

[wayniac]

I think the main problem with Pitched Battle/Matched Play is that they are the default.  It makes anything that isn't a Pitched Battle battleplan not worth it because it's "not balanced" (so all of those cool battleplans in the tomes and campaign books are useless).  It has a heavy emphasis on restrictions in an army (e.g. battleline, summoning, etc.) that often make it HARDER to come up with a theme.  It, IMHO, reduces the game to list building.

Note, I don't think that Matched Play is bad; it's objectively good.  But I wish it didn't basically remove any reason to use anything else, including the myriad of interesting scenarios.  However, I also feel GW did a very poor job of promoting Open/Narrative play since they have never to my knowledge given any real guidelines for making things enjoyable, and speaking from experience trying to think of a pitch to a friend who was completely interested in Open Play, trying to agree on what we should bring when there's literally nothing to even indicate how such a conversation could happen makes it almost impossibly hard to do, so much that I reluctantly threw up my hands and said "Let's just play 2k points matched then" because I was trying in vain to think how many warscrolls or whatnot would be suitable.

Perhaps the solution is in a compromise.  Matched Play/Pitched Battle uses battleline and only the pitched battle scenarios (and custom ones suitable for that purpose), the rule of ones etc.  Open/Narrative maybe the best approach is to use "Points Only" and then use a different scenario, maybe modify the rule of 1st (at least for spells, the other two I think are fine) and then figure out some way to not nerf summoning (25% of the army total available for summoning?), so you have points as a baseline structure, but less restrictive than regular matched play?

[chord]

Pitched battle is good for playing with strangers, but even then two armies with the same points are not necessarily even.

I saw a 1K dragon ogre/shaggoth army trounce a 1K dwarf army. 

 

[Double Misfire]

2 minutes ago, chord said:

Pitched battle is good for playing with strangers, but even then two armies with the same points are not necessarily even.

I saw a 1K dragon ogre/shaggoth army trounce a 1K dwarf army. 

 

The dwarf army didn't deploy deep enough or take enough cannons. 

[chord]

1 minute ago, Double Misfire said:

The dwarf army didn't deploy deep enough or take enough cannons. 

Having been beaten up by Dragon Ogres a lot I can testify that you can't get far enough away on a standard board size lol

[Double Misfire]

5 minutes ago, chord said:

Having been beaten up by Dragon Ogres a lot I can testify that you can't get far enough away on a standard board size lol

You underestimated the depth of my deployment sir!

[rokapoke]

13 minutes ago, wayniac said:

However, I also feel GW did a very poor job of promoting Open/Narrative play since they have never to my knowledge given any real guidelines for making things enjoyable

So you want Big Brother to tell you how to enjoy yourself?

I agree that there are huge issues with matched play having become the default in many (most, it seems) places. That's true at both of my FLGSs. However, the shop I play at every week has a community that is open to other things, and even within matched play there's a shortage of "filthy" lists. In my opinion, most of the complaints about matched play dominating over narrative or open play stem from relatively toxic play groups -- if there are a few players running the flavor-of-the-month with its most efficient build, that will certainly affect the enjoyment of the player who wants to take his favorite models out and run them around the battlefield. 

At the end of the day, GW didn't break open or narrative play. If those have been broken, it's the fault of the players.

[wayniac]

3 minutes ago, rokapoke said:

So you want Big Brother to tell you how to enjoy yourself?

I agree that there are huge issues with matched play having become the default in many (most, it seems) places. That's true at both of my FLGSs. However, the shop I play at every week has a community that is open to other things, and even within matched play there's a shortage of "filthy" lists. In my opinion, most of the complaints about matched play dominating over narrative or open play stem from relatively toxic play groups -- if there are a few players running the flavor-of-the-month with its most efficient build, that will certainly affect the enjoyment of the player who wants to take his favorite models out and run them around the battlefield. 

At the end of the day, GW didn't break open or narrative play. If those have been broken, it's the fault of the players.

I wanted "Big Brother" to give some sort of indicator on how to approach what is literally "Play anything you want" to at least attempt to make it fair so its not "I'm bringing 40 guys" and you are "I'm bringing 400 guys".

[CoffeeGrunt]

That's kinda the point of Open though. Work it out among yourselves, you're adults and all that malarky. Let's face it, GW haven't handed out edicts on not being creepy when women come in the store, or proper bodily hygiene, so clearly they consider the social nuances of gaming to be outside their purview.

I personally feel that Open doesn't have much relevance to me. I play Matched predominantly because it's easy and points are ubiquitous, and Narrative here and there where I fancy just having a laugh and rolling some dice. My Death make excellent villains for most people, so it's been swell so far.

Open occupies this weird area where it's basically AoS without Matched Play's restrictions or Narrative's story-oriented focus. It only really seems to be there for Apocalypse style games where the rules are made up and the points don't matter. If people have fun with that, it's cool, but those lamenting the restrictions of Battleline, etc, if that's your only issue, have you ever tried asking, "hey who wants to play a 2K game, but with only 2 Battleline?"

I dunno, if you're finding players are flocking to Matched over Open, then they're clearly enjoying one over the other. The best you can do is advocate for things and try and get people onboard with them, but ultimately some things don't fly. We have a guy who comes down every friday to push Infinity hard, but it's six months in, no-one cares, and each friday I feel like putting my hand on his shoulder and saying, "mate...it's just not going to work. It's not your fault, it just isn't catching."

[wayniac]

See things like that (the Infinity guy) I think show how narrow minded people can be.  I see so many people (usually GW fans) who don't want to know/care about anything not from their preferred game.  I've seen it happen with so many great games that nobody wants to bother with, so you never see them played despite them looking cool.  As a gamer with a myriad of tastes, that bugs me because there's so many cool things that you rarely see played.

Anyways, that's neither here nor there.  As I said above I think I'm going to try what I'm calling "Open Matched" with my group sometimes (not all the time) as a replacement for Open/Narrative.  Basically:

•  Points as per Matched Play's "Points Only", so no battleline requirements, etc.
• Rule of 1 for spells changes to successfully cast, not attempted (i.e. if your opponent unbinds a spell, you can have another wizard try to cast the same spell; this way you can't abuse things like take 10 wizards and cast Mystic Shield on all of your units)
• A 25% buffer (on top of any reinforcement points you set aside) to summon (e.g. in a 2k point game, you can summon 500 points for free in addition to anything you set aside).  This one I feel will get the most resistance because the "points MUST be equal or it's not fair!" crowd, but figure in Open Play you can summon an infinite number so 25% reigns it in.  The points don't replenish or anything, it's just something to not make summoning nerfed to the ground.
• Encourages the use of a non-Pitched Battle battleplan (e.g. one from a battletome, the campaign books, or a custom scenario) with specific victory conditions for each person.

[rokapoke]

2 minutes ago, wayniac said:

See things like that (the Infinity guy) I think show how narrow minded people can be.  I see so many people (usually GW fans) who don't want to know/care about anything not GW.  I've seen it happen with so many great games that nobody wants to bother with, so you never see them played despite them looking cool.

Anyways, that's neither here nor there.  As I said above I think I'm going to try what I'm calling "Open Matched" with my group sometimes (not all the time) as a replacement for Open/Narrative.  Basically:

* Points as per Matched Play's "Points Only", so no battleline requirements, etc.
* Rule of 1 for spells changes to successfully cast, not attempted (i.e. if your opponent unbinds a spell, you can have another wizard try to cast it)
* 25% buffer (on top of any reinforcement points you set aside) to summon (e.g. in a 2k point game, you can summon 500 points for free in addition to anything you set aside).  This one I feel will get the most resistance because the "points MUST be equal or it's not fair!" crowd, but figure in Open Play you can summon an infinite number so 25% reigns it in.  The points don't replenish or anything, it's just something to not make summoning nerfed to the ground.
* Encourages the use of a non-Pitched Battle battleplan (e.g. one from a battletome, the campaign books, or a custom scenario) with specific victory conditions for each person.

It sounds like what you're doing is exactly the kind of thing that GW "pushes" with respect to open play -- they've given you a basic, relatively loose, simple rules structure, and you've adapted it for your needs and wants. Hopefully you and your local playgroup(s) will enjoy it!

[CoffeeGrunt]

Interesting to see how you extrapolated the anecdote I put out there and applied your own biases to it. (That this guy is ignored because people are too narrow-minded to play non-GW games.)

It's worth noting that, in the store, the following games have at least half a dozen players regularly playing them:

- 40K, naturally,
- AoS, duh,
- Dropfleet Commander,
- Dropzone Commander,
- Guildball,
- Rumbleslam,
- Test of Honour,
- Malifaux,
- Batman minis game,
- Marvel Minis game,
- X-Wing,

The main reason people don't play Infinity isn't because they're narrow-minded and resistant to change, the game simply doesn't pique curiosity here. Most feel it's a pretty shallow, generic setting advocating a gameplay style that they aren't interested in.

[Galas]

34 minutes ago, CoffeeGrunt said:

The main reason people don't play Infinity isn't because they're narrow-minded and resistant to change, the game simply doesn't pique curiosity here. Most feel it's a pretty shallow, generic setting advocating a gameplay style that they aren't interested in.

I like pitched battles, they are great to play with new people. I can go to a club in other city with a list in my hand and my box of miniatures and play in 10 minutes. Althought, I'm lucky that I have a big club that originally was only about Roleplay, and then I introduced wargames, but basically our wargames games are 100% narrative in nature, even the more asheptic and competitive have always a strong narrative feeling to them.

 

PD: Infinity its great. And I don't say this because I'm from Galicia! 

[Sleboda]

2 hours ago, wayniac said:

I don't think that Matched Play is bad; it's objectively good.  But I wish it didn't basically remove any reason to use anything else, including the myriad of interesting scenarios

Agreed.

[BunkhouseBuster]

In my group, we pretty much just use the Matched Play points costs in the GH as a guideline for army size, with discussion before the game if we want to use the artifacts or Allegiance abilities.  We don't really worry about Battleline requirements, and instead just focus on learning and enjoying the game.

Most of us are really, REALLY excited for Narrative games, especially since so many of us have become tired of the WAAC, ultra-competitive players in the local 40K and Warmahordes scene.  The fact that Age of Sigmar actually encourages Narrative play in the GH is awesome, and I am trying to put together a narrative campaign for the local players.