Dead Scribe

That is a wide sweeping statement that is just simply not true. I play one or two games every week and our current roster of players that plays at our store is over twenty people. Most of the people that I know *are* pure tournament players. I don't think there is anyway to know at a global level how many tournament players there are or who are willing to play that way vs how many are not. If I were to move to a different area that did not have a lot of tournament players, I would do my best to build that scene up.

Still a fair amount of garbage in the game TBH. Maybe 2020?

Fully agree. Slaves to Darkness is trash because they are both very overcosted for what little they do... and for what little they do. They are a faction I'm not even sure I understand why they keep around because their rules are so bad.

I'm not sure this is the game for people passionate about an army if they are also passionate about having competitive games. You can't have both in AOS unless you just happen to have your passion army also be one of the powerful armies for a cycle.

I think thats because largely people see the same DoK or FEC build... the broken one, that the rest of the faction is not seen and therefore doesn't exist to the mind.

Its a balancing act. Getting people in the door only to have the majority be put off by what they consider a non standard tournament rule will damage any future attempts you want to be involved in. The era of the models has not yet been attempted to be reigned in. It would be considered by most common tournament players that a 1990s era blood thirster be legit so long as it was on a 2019 blood thirster base. It does allow for modeling for advantage.

Largely because the win rate at tournaments is the only solid datapoint most of us have to go by. It seems to be a universal that tournament win % is the gauge for all of AOS balance. The biggest flux is at what level of the % is acceptable or unacceptable. Ex: some people would like to see everything at 50% which is untenable in my opinion. Others see anything higher than 60% or lower than 40% as bad. The threshold is different from person to person. This does not take casual game win percentages as the high end tournament lists are typically known to be the most optimal and efficient and represent the entire faction in terms of overall balance.

That cannot be answered by anyone here. Which is why I suggested he post a poll in his region's facebook or whatever he is using to communicate with them to get their expectations. Yes. A person using 25mm rounds instead of 32mm rounds where the basing guidelines state 32 mm round would not be allowed to play in any event, and would likely not find games outside of events since we use outside event play as tuning events. We use the big tournament guidelines for that, which I stated in a reply above. Thats your area and largely influenced likely by you and what you have established as legacy. Here since the inception of AOS tournaments (2016) that would not fly and you would have a lot of flak over trying to allow that to happen (allowing squares). Which is why I suggest again to the OP to post a poll asking what the expectation of his community is and to go with that.

Thats where a local poll comes into play, because in my area the number of highly competitive gamers is much higher than 10% that wouldn't care.

Thats likely because the default conversation setting is competitive tournament context, at least online. Without chasing the meta and being smart about the army you buy and play from season to season, this is not possible by default without heavy social engineering with your opponent to get them to not play as hard as they can, which many people are heavily opposed to doing.

I think that that is a purposeful design choice however. There is a lot of complaining about more complicated rules and it seems the majority of the AOS-fanverse does not want anything to do with complicated rules. Additionally there is a lot of complaining about games taking too long, so having a system that is deadly from turn 1 was what a good majority of the AOS-fanverse wanted. This was delivered upon. For every person I see that complains about half an army or more dying in turn 1 being a negative, I read two or three others countering that saying thats exactly what they want it to be. This could be another instance of we don't know what the majority vote on in the polls however because that data is never shared with us. That could be. The majority of people I associate with pretty much treat everything as all crunch though, tabletop or card game. The models are pogs. I think that the rules could be made to work with both desires, but right now there is this implied social contract that is nebulous and means something different from person to person, and therein lies the primary issue. The rules should be the rules. Play by the rules. If it is not desired that the listbuilding aspect be so powerful that a competitive list will turn 1 table a casual list, do something in the rules to make it less polar. Right now the listbuilding aspect of the game is very strong and a desired feature for a great number of players, and while that is true you will always have alpha busted lists running amuk against other lists.

You can run a poll in a competitive forum and ask how many competitive tournament players would prefer you use the listed standard bases and how many would be ok with letting people run non standard bases if you feel that I'm somehow the minority. I know that adepticon wrestled with that same subject and it seemed the vast majority of the attendees did not want to see wrong sized or square bases. So for your area I would run a poll to get the exact numbers. Allowing squares but not allowing different sized rounds is highly illogical to me because squares allow for the same type of competitive advantage that smaller rounds do.

Unfortunately whenever spirit of the rules is a topic of debate, it becomes a touchy subject. I and others like me get criticized daily across social media or other forums for playing the game competitively as if its an abomination to play to win and is akin to "clubbing baby seals and enjoying it". Weirdly enough I did not really encounter this type of stance until I started tabletop gaming. Card gaming it was accepted by pretty much everyone. Interesting thought to ponder I suppose. On to topic I'm looking forward to seeing what changes the GHB brings the tournament scene and figuring out what army I will be playing in 2019/2020.

Spirit of the game is always going to be subjective. For me the spirit of the game is to win the game by any legal means necessary and obtain maximum match points given to me by the game developers through their rules. For others, it is to create armies based on their idea of the narrative. The actual rules themselves dictate what you can and cannot do. I don't think its right for people to chastise others for playing within the confines of the rules because they are playing a way that is not favorable to them.

Many players, I won't use the word most, even though from my experience it is most, are after a dominant faction yes. The honest ones will tell you up front that is the case. I will never play a list that is not considered "dominant", "AAA", or "broken" because those are the tools needed to win tournaments. We are a binary species in the tournament hall lol, either its really good for its points, or its unplayable. Thats where you are seeing a lot of people complaining their list is unplayable. Because while it may have a 50% win rate, it is unplayable... *in the tournament hall at the competitive level*. The problem with a lot of posts and discussions of the game is there is 99.9% never any context to someone telling someone else everything is fine, or everything is broken. To have real meaningful context, we'd need an example game to watch for the person to point out why they think what they think and show examples of gameplay where that was the case. That will 99.9% never happen barring reviewing video battle reports and discussing those.

This is the key part of the original post: Unless a ton of people in that area are running on squares, allowing squares to appease a handful of people is going to turn a lot of others off big time. If you want a friendly casual time where the bases don't matter as much, call it a get together or an AOS day, but calling it a tournament brings expectations with it to a large number of people.

Back to back undercosted and over powered exceptions at that

You're also going to want to make sure the standard bases are being used. People showing up with legacy square bases will also make people angry because it gives those people an advantage.

Yep. No extra points. No house rules. You will make a lot of people angry otherwise. If those people that own legacy armies want to be competitive they will need to pony up and get a competitive meta army, or be ok with using their legacy army and doing the best with what little they can.

I think your assessment is dead accurate. That is the model at play in AOS. If you want to be competitive you have to be willing to churn and burn your collection. Any other route means you have to be ok with and embrace losing because of army disparity and be ok with that. That is also the biggest complaint that I personally hear when we have recruitment. New players don't want to churn and burn, or they jump in and after the first GHB kneecaps them they sell their collection and leave for good because they don't want to keep that cycle. I started about two and a half years ago and of our initial group which was about 18 players , there are only four original members remaining because the others got out because they didn't want to have to buy new armies.

I can see where that causes confusion. To me a product developer and a product designer are the same basic thing. But I'll chalk that up to my understanding of the words vs across the ocean understanding of the words.

If you want to appeal to the most people: #1) do not use house rules. If you are going to use house rules, use something like LVO or Adepticon rules as those are accepted by the tournament community as acceptable. House rules will put off a lot of people. Do not modify double turn. Do not modify summoning. Do not deviate from matched play standards unless you are using one of the big tournaments as a basis. Tournament players above all desire consistency in events so that their games are played in the same context. Many play them to tune lists for bigger events. If you are using house rules and other things, that context is shattered and the incentive to play is lost to many. #2) do not enforce painting requirements. Give an award for best painted by all means but if you require models to be painted you are cutting out a large number of people that have no interest in painting and do not pay others to paint for them. #3) stick to matched play scenarios only. #4) stick to timed games rigidly. Otherwise you will have games go off the rails and into overtime and it will drag the entire event down.

My source would be several people have called him the lead designer, the twitch stream called him the lead designer, and twitter posts have called him the lead designer in the past.

Ben Johnson is the AOS lead designer. I would imagine that means he has a hand in writing rules, unless lead designer does something that completely confounds me.

Apparently.