Dead Scribe

You won't be able to hold objectives very well and that will cost you often.

I'm still waiting to see if we're even allowed to take them in tournaments before I get too deep into whether or not they are even viable.

Because its very powerful and it allows me to be competitive against other players who are also building very powerful lists.

Interesting. Was there a commentary that stated that the points cost of units also included how powerful they were with their faction terrain? I hear people talk all the time about how summoning armies are balanced because summoning armies have their points cost added into their totals but I've never heard that sylvaneth and nurgle had their points costs inflated to account for their free terrain.

I can understand that. Though I looked at the narrative event organizer events (there was one at adepticon) and a lot of the guys there were just running tournament lists like that and that seemed fine. Which always confused me for the longest time because the only difference I saw in their events and tournament events were they were running special scenarios. The lists and expectations were roughly the same though.

The second category doesn't harbor negative emotions toward competitive players like the third category does. The third category expects that the people they play will field forces appropriate to the lore and can get bent out of shape if they don't. They are typically the ones posting verbal tirades about "waac players". The second category is ok with competitive players playing harder lists though prefer people tone things down a notch.

I think at that point its just a matter of mincing words. I have encountered four types of player this year that call themselves "narrative". 1) competitive players that create hard lists that write a narrative background for their force and battleboard. They care about their narrative but the force is still selected based off of the mathematical optimal coefficients. 2) players that may be considered "semi competitive" that create fairly hard lists that want to tell stories that are not blowouts. They write stories and battle reports and while winning is not their first priority, having a good engaging game is, because a one sided story bores them. 3) players that build armies that are representative of what is in the books, and want to face armies that are equally what is in the books but also want to enjoy the game and not get blown out. These players tend to get annoyed when players like me only field optimal lists because we don't care about the books or stories. 4) players that want to tell stories that don't care about the outcome and are happy to play anyone regardless of outcome. This is the rarest type but I have encountered this person. They like the stories, see the game as telling a story, but are not concerned with the outcome or if they win or not. Based on this, the term "narrative" means different things to different people. There was a good convo at adepticon this year where we discussed narrative campaigns and how adepticon the tournament could also be considered a campaign since it was a linked set of battles, and in fact there were a few guys there playing the tournament as a campaign for their own head canon.

Most battle reports are not worth the time watching unfortunately, there is a deluge of them and most are of poor quality.

If you don't mind blowout games then you are definitely not the aim of what I was saying. There are a lot of people that do care about that kind of thing. For those people, narrative or tournament, they need to keep that in mind when choosing forces.

This is why if one wants to play a game that is not one-sided and they care about the quality of the game, that the person should regardless of if they are tournament "WAAC" or narrative, pick a force that is not gimped by the rules. And that means if they are narrative and they still care about non blowout games that they too will have to chase around what is strong and what is garbage.

You'd have to take that up with event organizers. They do what they are going to do. I'm sure some events will allow for it. Its just not going to be universal. GW doesn't write for events, thats why they added other forms of play that those models can still be used in.

We always do a 3rd party sets up the table. I can't see that changing unless tournaments start letting there be a terrain placement phase of the game. If thats the case then we will move to that as well.

There really isn't any news in regards to them indicating that a new army is in the works released shortly. There are a lot of legends armies now that did not get a new book. There is no indication or reason why, they get binned when GW decides its time for them to get binned. This is why I would never buy any models from a faction that don't have a tome.

Its mostly skaven that suffer from the current rules since their terrain has to be set near the table edges and you can lock those out.

Its a difficult proposal for a lot of people to decouple from competitive mindsets in games like this. It does take a certain type of person to be able to enjoy the game in a non competitive "open" format I've found.

Well people constantly remind me matched play is not tournament play and that tournament play is essentially house ruled matched play.

If you aren't playing in tournaments I don't think it really matters, you should be able to use whatever you want with your group. If you're playing in tournaments then you will be at the whim of your tournament organizer. This is why I say that I feel its kind of dirty for GW to sell models for factions that don't have full books, because its highly disingenuous to either buy into a faction that has abysmal rules, or buy into a faction that was not fully supported and is suddenly yanked and then the community tells you to just wait potentially x years for it to return.

I think that it was really an experiment to see just how unbalanced open play could be. The community here is mostly about balanced tournament play but yes they were trying to see if other formats would appeal to them as well. So far they have not. Whether or not they were playing it wrong I don't know.

It should only be a problem for you if you are primarily a tournament player. Otherwise you can houserule that they are still usable, and if you are using narrative or open play its not an issue at all. Herein lies the issue with tournament rules trying to also be casual rules.

I think its more that they were trying to see how it worked and since almost everyone in my store is pretty much pro-sports competitive level, they found out that open play is not for them.

We had a couple guys try the open generator at the store last sunday. They brought their collections in and did some narrative thing with it. It was pretty one-sided game because one guy drew better than the other and its based off of wounds, so they just picked the best units they could. Granted, our matched play games often end the same way (very one sided) because list building and points balance. However, I would be surprised to see this used in our store again. Both players were kind of not happy with the type of game it produced.

I agree. There are a lot of rulesets out there that I think are better and more fun. But you can't find any players for it because everyone plays GW games, bad rules or otherwise.

Normal GW practice or not, it is probably other than people complaining about balance all the time, a primary feel-bad that people leave over.

Slaves to Darkness has almost no offensive capability at all, they have an ok defensive unit in warriors, and the demon prince can be made to be useful. Considering how awesome the model range is for them all, thats almost criminal. The varanguard models are some of the best models in the entire game and they are just horrible rules-wise.

I would agree. Keeping armies like slaves to darkness around is to me almost dishonest. Players pick that army up and then find out how garbage their rules are and it is definitely a feel-bad experience. They should have just pulled all of the older armies completely and then whenever they felt like doing a slaves to darkness or whatever book, reintroduced them.