Wednesday 23 May 2018

Is Competitive Play Hurting 40K?

Sometime ago I was involved in an online discussion about whether or not competitive play was actually being a detriment to the game especially after events at the Las Vegas Open at the start of the year.

The main three arguments that started this discussion were:

1. Soup lists would not be as effective if players stuck to an army list that was pure fluff by the universe/lore of Warhammer 40K.

2. Games Workshop would not need to nerf units and rules so much if they were not used and abused so much in tournaments.

3. The overpowered units get buffed by Games Workshop because then more players would buy them.

I think that the people I spoke with were forgetting a specific fourth point which is that in any game that pits player versus player, there will always be an element of competitiveness. That just cannot be helped as even in a friendly fun game both players want to win. It's simply human nature.

The main responses to the three points above were:

1. If Games Workshop did their job right then the game would be balanced and problems like soup lists wouldn't be an issue.

2. People should not be punished or put down because they enjoy the play style they find most fun.

3. It's Games Workshop's fault for releasing a rules set that can be abused like this.

You can certainly see that this is a topic that resulted in a lot of discussion, much of it heated. But it raised a further three points that I am going to try and address here myself:

1. Is competitiveness ruining/has ruined Warhammer 40K?

2. Why is it ruining/has ruined 40K?

3. How can we fix this?

In this particular discussion my response to point 1 was "yes, somewhat". War games by their very nature are meant to be competitive exercises. The problem is that Warhammer 40K is a game that generally draws two sorts of people - competitive players who play the mechanical side of the game and casual / narrative players who (usually) want to play less competitively but are more interested in playing because of the fluff side of the game. In my experience, the two sides rarely enjoy a game together because they want different things out of it.

Competitive play is about winning, although not necessarily WAAC (win at all costs). It's turning up with a perfect list and playing it to achieve victory. That is fine when it is competitive versus competitive. More often than not though I see competitive players using that same style against less competitive players and casual players, usually to detriment of the casual players enjoyment of the game. It is almost as if some competitive players cannot tone their play style down to accommodate the play style of their opponent. That however is not the fault of the game but the problem of having two very different styles of play. I sometimes wonder whether traditional historical war gaming has the same issue?

Some may disagree with me here but I have found that the 8th edition rules do not support a competitive style of play very well. It is too easy to break the mechanics and push the envelope too far. However, if played for a fun and casual format that isn't built around using and abusing the mechanics of a much simpler system than we have had before, it works fantastically. It is a war game so it is going to have tournaments and competitive events but I don't feel that that is where the heart and soul of 8th edition lies. Nor do I think it was the intent of Games Workshop was to produce a competitive game system.


Why do I think this? It's because I am a casual player. I can't say that I have a single competitive bone in my body. It's just not in me. It is why although I am intrigued by tournaments I don't attend them. 

One of the arguments that I made at the time, was that casual players cannot always play up to the level of competitive players. Some simply don't want to play like that, others (myself included if I am to be honest) just don't have the mindset to understand points to worth ratio or have the same level of tactical skill. But when you raise this, competitive players frequently state that they shouldn't be the ones to lower their game but they fully expect casual and less experienced players to raise theirs despite the reasons that I have just mentioned. Essentially it is a no win situation because neither side seems willing or able to accommodate the other. 

At tournaments we have seen some absolutely silly competitive lists. But we also have to consider what the definition of competitive play is. A well constructed list where the player has thought through points and upgrade combinations to make the best possible army is often seen as competitive but it is also the play style - playing to win by analysing the game and making no mistakes - that falls under that heading too. The ten plagueburst crawler list at the Las Vegas Open while probably not a optimized list was certainly a competitive move by the player, even if it was supposedly fielded just to make a point to Games Workshop. 

Games Workshop has two ways of examining the state of 8th edition. They can look at comments and feedback on their community site which may not always been accurate as people have a tendency to overreact to something they don't like, and rarely do people praise the things that they do like. Secondly, Games Workshop watches what gets played at the major tournaments. This is the only way they get to see really what players are taking in their lists because they can't see what the rest of us play at home or at our gaming clubs. Since tournaments are the ultimate competitive environment Games Workshop are forced to use these as the means of which they decide whether a unit or upgrade needs a points raise, points reduction or an FAQ/errata.

I'm not convinced that the design team over at Games Workshop do a lot of play testing and if they do, I certainly don't think they play competitive lists of the sort that we see at tournaments. Which again strikes me that 8th edition was not designed for the competitive sort of play. If it was I think we would have a much tighter set of rules and far less ambiguities in games.


I'm not saying that tournaments are the root of this problem. Tournaments are just an outlet for the competitive player where they can let go and really show what they are made of. The problem is that Games Workshop have given us a great brand new system for Warhammer 40K that if played with an even hand and a casual mindset works wonders. It is when the competitive mindset takes over and lists are build around the mechanics to achieve victory at the expense of the opponent's enjoyment in a non-competitive environment that we have a problem.

Can we fix this? Unfortunately after nearly a year of pondering this and reading similar topics online about this same problem I don't think we can. We are going to be stuck with the competitive and casual players at opposite ends of the gaming spectrum and as long as Games Workshop uses the competitive side of 8th edition to monitor the health of the game and adjust elements, competitive play will always remain dominant. Things will only change when competitive players actually try to play down to a casual level and see things from a different point of view.


"In war, nothing is more honourable than victory."
- Worf, Deep Space Nine - "Way of the Warrior"






3 comments:

  1. I think the two types of player are further apart then they have ever been in 8th. That said, it isn't a new phenomena, it's been like that since tournaments began.
    The predicament that we have now is down to GW's philosophy of letting people use whatever they want. It started with 6th edition and as soon as 8th was released it was easy to see how it would play out with the detachment and Faction rules.

    In 5th edition the gap between casual players and competitive players was limited to a degree because however competitive/narrative driven a player was, they could still only choose one Codex and each Codex had it's own advantages/disadvantages. In 8th edition those disadvantages have been removed by the simple act of allowing a player to bolster a traditional weakness with the use of another Codex or by increasing their advantages by using more detachments. For competitive players, this opens up many more permutations for them to enjoy: For casual/narrative players this increases the gap between their background driven philosophy and the competitive one.

    GW are now trying to reduce this effect, but they've opened the box....and it's virtually impossible to close it now in my opinion.

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    Replies
    1. The problem with soup lists is that they fit both ends of the spectrum. On one hand they can be very competitive as you say, but on the other they make for some good fluffy lists for the casual/narrative players.

      I was quite surprised when Games Workshop started putting the downers on soup style play because under the Indexes and initial release of 8th edition, Imperium, Aeldari and Chaos seemed pretty much designed to be combined within themselves.

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  2. I think competitive play is important for the game, as it brings in players and generates more income for GW generally than casual play, mostly due to the constant uopdating of army lists that happens. It keeps the game alive and growing, which can only be a good thing.

    On the other hand I have felt recently that the emphasis has gone to much towards the competitive side though. Casual players are forced to pay attention to what's happening in the tournament scene more and more.

    The most recent example of this is the big FAQ. That introduced some pretty major changes to the game which really can't be ignored unless you have a pretty tightknit gaming group. It actually completely invalidated my fluffy Inquisition army, as I can't field Soup detachments any more, so I physically don't have access to enough detachments in order to field everything which used to be under the Inquisitional Warband entry :(

    I can see why GW are going the direction they are, but I think they're in danger of actually alienating casual players with their emphasis on rules updates over material for narrative play.

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