Golub87

I would disagree about the interactions being deep. Yes you can create quite complex layers of powerful combos, but these things are set up in the army list building stage and do not bring any kind of emergent gameplay to the table. Emergent gameplay being that new and unexpected situations arise from actual play that force you to adjust the way you play. AoS is too fast and too simple a game for that. You are either doing your planned thing and winning or not dong your thing and losing. There is no room for developing situation on the board. Lack of terrain rules also contributes to this - every single battlefield is the same - an arena peppered with obstacles that sometimes do something so minor that including it in the game actually takes away room the experience because it adds to the noise without actually changing considerations of play. One place where you do have emergent interactions are the battle tactics that have potential, because they are not prepared in advance but is something mutable and something that you have to improvise according to the situation and plan ahead what would be the optimal time to execute them as well as the optimal way to stop the opponent from scoring them. there is some gold hidden in them hills, it's just a shame that it is drowned out by all the other noise. Now, wheels and arcs are a very good example of what I meant when I said that GW rules writing leaves off the impression of a heartbreaker game. W&A are an important part of historical wargaming because it is all about piloting your cumbersome formations around in order to bring about maximum impact on a small section of the enemy line overwhelming it and securing the victory if the enemy can't plug the hole and you are in the position to exploit it. These games would be ridiculous and would lose a lot of depth without wheels and arcs. Now GW wanted to make their massive wargame but with orcs and elves, a great idea and they took all those rules from historical wargaming and implemented them without any consideration as to how the changing setting and new unit types fit with those rules. Same happened later with AoS, GW recognized that skirmish games are the new hotness, so they put their models on round bases and established individual movement and called it a day, not realizing that the reason why skirmish games are popular is in the fact that you can have an army ready quickly and cheaply with 10-15 models, not because of the round bases and individual movement. This results in fiddly coherency rules, headache inducing movement phases that eat most of the game time and overall player exhaustion resulting from moving dozens or even hundreds of models one at a time with no upside whatsoever. This is what I meant when I said that GW games look like heartbreakers - they take these things because "that is how things are done" and just toss them in without consideration on how it interacts with the rest of the game, just like fantasy heartbreaker RPGs of late 80s that were all about dungeon crawling and "what do you mean you can have an RPG without the weapons and armor table?". Just a parade of completely unquestioned assumptions cast in stone, without a thought that it might be done differently. Let's take a look at a charge roll. Why is it there? It introduces a factor of randomness and risk, what if you fail... sure, I have no problem with that. But the execution has been the same for decades now. Roll 2d6 and compare the distance. Why is it like that? At this point I am sure that the answer is that no one thought to ask the question if it should be different... because there are much better ways to do it, make it a morale check for example. Fixed distance, depending on the movement, but you have to pass morale check. All of a sudden, piloting light skirmisher cav and heavy elite inf feels completely different even without the fancy warscroll fireworks. These guys can easily make long distance charge but their morale is poor, these guys will get stuck in, but I have to move them closer and cover them while they get there. This is depth, creating a ruleset that completely changes the role of the unit by switching two numbers around. Their entire warscroll could be blank, and they would still have flavor and FEEL different. As it stands charge roll is a rule that is there and that has no interaction with the rest of the rules, aside from occasional charge roll boost, which is something that can be kept under a different system, adding more depth.

I mean I get it that this is what you meant, but would you be so kind to elaborate on that? An example of depth? From my perspective it seems that the opposite is true - game has enormous complexity manifested in all kinds of different abilities, rules and exceptions, while having very little depth - core systems of the game are merely there as a delivery methods for warscrolls whose individual abilities are more akin to hand grenades that you fire off when needed. Sure, there are interactions between warscrolls, but these are quite linear (ok, my hero gives off bonus in a bubble, so I keep him next to the unit that is the optimal target for the bonus). It is all very straightforward and basic while still being burdened with a huge amount of text that is not standardized in the slightest. Depth is a vertical measurement, where you have a comparatively small footprint of tight rules that create emergent layers via their interactions. AoS takes a very horizontal approach - constantly adding new abilities and widening the pool of optional rules while having bare bones core rules. This is a game that requires a cheat sheet to play (ok, lets see, start of hero phase I activate this thing, then I fire off these abilities, end of hero phase do this... OK, lets do movement phase now). And for all these extra rules, it becomes quite rigid once you finalize your list, your gameplan is usually fixed by then with few variations or options during the game itself. It is a complex, fiddly game with lots of busywork (remembering all the buffs and abilities while pushing dozens upon dozens of models across the table individually) with surprisingly little depth, just a lot of noise.

Fun is a very subjective thing and hard to discuss in any medium. Best way to go about it would be: "This book/song/painting/movie/game is trying to evoke a particular mood in the audience by doing X. Does it really do X? Does it use all the tools and techniques available in the medium to achieve X? How well does it use those tools when compared to other examples of the medium?" etc. There is a reason why a good movie or book critique does not just speak of fun but of more quantifiable things, like pacing, character development, framing devices etc. That way you do not get the answer if the piece of work is fun, but you do get an answer if it does its thing well or not and each of us can then make a decision if that would be fun or not for us. I would never watch a buddy cop comedy, even if it is exceptional and critically acclaimed, but might try out average sci-fi if I have nothing better to do. That said I am curious about this complexity you mentioned. What exactly do you mean by it?

The problem with GW rules writing is in the fact that the game started out as a garage heartbreaker wargame that found success by chance and over three decades and billions of dollars later it... just inexplicably remains on par with garage heartbreaker wargames when it comes to game design. It still seems like an inexperienced group of people whipping out their own wargame in their spare time, emulating certain elements from other games they are familiar with, without really understanding why those elements are there in the first place.

Of all the things in AoS lore that rub me the wrong way (and it's probably about 95% that rubs me the wrong way), this is by far the worst. What is a more compelling, sensible narrative that provides more information about the world? That Sigmar the God is an entity from the Realm of Chaos that was created, responded to and got shaped by the legends that citizens of the Empire had about the founder of their nation (which reflect the Arthurian legends of our own world). OR That Sigmar the God is actually the dude what smacks orks (sorry, Orruks) real good with a hammer. The more smacking, the more divinity.

Why not?

Having the market cornered is no indication of quality.

What I always found interesting with people that I know that are in legal profession is that they never consider flipping the table to be a legitimate option, even when the game is designed so that it is the only logical conclusion (example: monopoly) 😂

In this day and age this is not the kind of oversight that a multi billion dollar company can make and claim ignorance. We are not talking about mom-and-pop store here. Now more generally, I got back into GW products after 12 years of hiatus at the end of 2019 and I have to say that I am DEEPLY concerned over some of the stuff that I have seen in the community. This thread in particular makes my skin crawl.

For example, have books in the electronic format where background noise can be turned off and where you can have a font option (not many, just so you can change the font to something that is super crisp) would probably be sufficient.

I am sorry, is this some sort of an inside joke or is that what actually happened - as in, twitter account related to GW mocked you online for your impairment?!?

Yes, keywords being your choice. You chose how to model and paint the goblin head and what it means to you. Now imagine painting the "follow me" on a goblin helmet because you think it's cute for a goblin boss to have such a flagrant and childish display of authority and rank. You go to your weekend game or worse yet a tournament, and the opponent picks up your interesting figure and says well this dude is clearly having the Item X and if you are not using it that way that gives you unfair advantage. Also, while some people may be privileged enough to have multiple models for every possible version of the given character, most are not in that position, so I am not sure what exactly are you trying to prove with this point? Are you shaming people for playing the game with the models they have? For not being able to afford as much models as you can afford? I don't get it.

I do not really feel like this debate leads anywhere at this point because I do not think that the people who support this kind of nitpicking are honest in their arguments. It is clear that GW makes rulings like these because they feel like that will help them push more plastic, regardless of it potentially encouraging toxic behavior. Of course, like any company they will come up with whatever flimsy excuse to make the rule appear customer friendly. A minority of the community has clearly adopted these reasons and repeat them with a straight face. "I know the rules and factions so well that I know that your guys must be Red, but they are Blue and that paradox hurts my performance" is such a poor, flimsy excuse. It is such an absurd premise that I am not capable of taking it seriously as an argument. The foremost question in my mind is not what is the correct answer here, as that is clear, but what hides behind these arguments.

This here is the essence of the problem - it opens rooms for bullies and mindgamers to latch onto this. It is like saying "as long as you discuss who won and agree, you can ignore the victory points scored during the game". There is no benefit for the players or the community in this ruling.

Sure: 1. I might have half of an army and it will take another year before I can afford/paint the rest. 2. I want to test out different units and configurations but I am not ready to splurge that much money and/or effort just for the test. 3. I like the faction, but I do not like that one sculpt that is bad (ex: chaos marauders) 4. I have an amazing conversion idea. 5. I like paint scheme A, but I enjoy the game play of faction B more. Also, your baseball example is quite bad to the point where I wonder if it is even made in good faith. You are not tossing out someone for trying to play basketball while everyone else is playing baseball. You are tossing them out because they do not have the official dress or got their equipment second hand and not trough the very expensive local club.

Exactly! Pretty much any argument that has been presented in favor of this ruling is wet-paper-thin excuse. The idea that GW is pushing rulings like these because they are concerned about the malicious use of proxies or because that they are deeply invested in army themes, and that the fact that it supports the sales of more plastic is just an unrelated coincidence is ridiculous. Equally ridiculous as the idea that a person has genuine trouble and is at a disadvantage if the opponent uses proxies so that is why they insist on nitpicking the enemy army and not because they want to dominate the social space around the game in order to gain advantage within the game. I am sorry, but I am not buying this and I am really glad that community as a whole does not seem to buy it either.

Indeed, the only purpose any corporation has is extraction of as much wealth as possible for as little effort as possible. Everything else is PR.

Shhhhhh... <.< >.> Not so loud. Seriously, though, of course that is the reason, everybody knows it. That said, I do not think that is going to work the way they hope. People that buy 5 whole SM armies just so they can have Dark Angels, Ultramarines, White Scars... they were going to do that anyway. They do it because they like it and because they have enough disposable income. If they keep tightening the grip they might actually lose some sales. Back in 2000-2002, when I was a high school kid, I played a bit of WHFB (thank god I got out of it in 2002 and went into 40k, so I was not there for the end times). Guys at the store allowed me to play with paper proxies, gave me models and eventually I got my first box of chaos warriors. Then I got my hands on some chaos knights knockoffs that were ugly as sin. No one at the GW store made a big deal out of it, so after a while I got a box of marauders (the same box you can get today :D) and so on... If they were super strict, there is no way they would have gotten those sales out of me. Turns out if you let people try out stuff for free and experiment, eventually they will want to own the official thing. If you put up fences and gates... people will look to a different hobby.

True, I suppose, it does prevent malicious use of proxies, but I am struggling to think of a case where someone would get a genuine game advantage with proxies. The only example I can think of, is "the teleporting unit champion" which is quite minor in the grand scheme of things. Putting potato on a base is kind of ugly and sad, but I would not say it gives the player game advantage. On the other hand this ruling does open the door to the unsportsmanlike behavior in the other direction. Given the wording, you can legitimately object to a person playing chamber X because they are not in those colors and nitpick someone's army to death, with 100% full support of the rules as written. No one goes "ah your models are red, that means you are faction X", rather, you look at the opponent's list. I do not think that preventing shenanigans is the motivation behind this ruling...

I mean... if a potato is all they have on hand, then why should I stop them? Just make sure it has an appropriate sized base. People want to try out things on the table before investing significant money in the plastic and that is 100% fine. Also, someone might not have the money to afford all the units for an army right now, and might buy it incrementally, over time. As for "gotcha" moments - I use Splintered Fang cultist models mounted on 25mm instead of marauders. Marauders are ugly and old models (1997 I think), Splintered Fang cultists fit Slaaneshi aesthetics much better and it is not like cultist rules are of much use to begin with. I assure you that there is exactly 0 people on this planet Earth of ours who have the intellectual capacity to remember different rules for Splintered Fangs and Marauders and plan their moves accordingly, but also lack the intellectual capacity to remember that this blob of half-naked guys on 25mm bases are in fact Marauders and not this other unit that no one ever uses. Again, as someone mentioned gatekeeping and poking holes in opponent's army is pure powerplay and mindgame and it has nothing to do with practicality. Person playing the game with what they have is not being tricky or underhanded, the person who is trying to leverage the opponent's lack of models into an advantage is.

Well, I guess the issue is that we have a fundamental disagreement on what is the meaning of "community". To me, a community is a group of people that share certain interests or circumstances and help and support each other. As of late, with the rise of social media and whatnot, "community" has also entered corp vernacular and it has come to mean a group of people that can be relied upon for free marketing and public presence. See the difference? Community benefiting itself and its members vs the "community" benefiting outside entity. You can also easily distinguish between the two from the inside as well - in this example, if a player wants to try the game but does not currently have the means to get the full army, will you side with the fellow community member and enrich your circle of friends while at the same time making someone's life easier and nicer, or will you side with the corporate bottom line? Are you in community or in #community?

100% If I have stuff that I am not using with me, it is available.

In all of my wargaming hobbies, people can play against me with empty bases as far as I am concerned. This is an expensive hobby and excluding financially less fortunate from any space due to aesthetic reasons is never a good thing.

Wait how does that work?

I can take them, they are just not a battleline anymore.