Well I’d like to think I’m reasonably objective about GW and their decision making having been both a vocal critic and advocate of their past decisions.
As a commercially minded person I’ve supported the price rises and down sizing of the product range, hell I even supported the lack of support of sideline games that I thoroughly enjoyed knowing it makes zero sense to throw resources behind a game with very low revenue opportunities.
I’ve also panned their CEO for failing to have a clear cut strategy on how to turn 10% to 20% of their young burn and churn players into long term customers and the outright idiotic decision to purchase the LOTR rights because “we couldn’t afford someone else to”. [Tip for young players – never pay above the value you think you can derive for an asset this is called stupidity, clearly someone failed their LD check at the start of negotiations.]
So now I’m stuck here at a cross roads which GW has forced upon me. Warhammer Fantasy battles, the hobby I’ve enjoyed sine I was 12 years old and have toiled at through 4 editions is standing on the precipice of moving from a hobby to simply another board game.
GW’s costing of the past two army books have in my view dramatically unbalanced the game and as a result is forcing it away from being a viable system in which to have genuine competition.
In my 17 years of gaming the VC book is by far and away the most poorly constructed rule set I have seen produced, and there have been some humdingers in that time. Either the rule makers lack the basic understanding of how much regeneration, unbreakable, immune to pysch, fear causing, terror, efficient magic and weapon skill impact the game or they have applied, at best, arbitrary values to these.
Sure it is natural that just after a book is released to hear the tales of anguish about how much GW has gotten it wrong, but the more time goes on the more my, and others, opinions grow that they have flat out gotten this wrong.
I would like to think it was simple aberration the part shot of incompetence from the designer in question but alas GW followed it up with the Demon army which is once again substantially more efficient than the pre VC armies.
Incorporating the discussions with experienced players who have/do play VC/Demons have lead to me forming the conclusion that VC is probably costed at about a discount of 10% to 20%. A wide range to be sure, and prone to both exaggeration or conservatism depending on which side of the fence you lie, but either way a significant pick up in “true points”.
So where has this arisen from? I’d say the most obvious elements that have been under costed are the immune to pysch, unbreakable, cause fear and survivability of the units. The elements ensure that the units are exceptionally reliable and can overcome what was supposed to be the best offensive in warhammer, a well executed charge.
So why do I care and why don’t I just change armies? Well there are two reasons.
The first is the long term survivability of the game. GW is already a company which has been poorly performing during the strongest economic boom in living memory and now faces a more uncertain trading environment.
Now they’ve introduce an escalated army race of army books. Whilst this may increase the churn and burn revenue generation of casual gamers who have smaller armies or move to the next big thing, it only further alienates the loyal customer base that previous management ignored. If you have a product where loyal customers are relatively inelastic due to sunk costs and a “unique” system then wouldn’t a major strategic concern be maximising the amount of those customers?
There are better strategies for turning over books than ones which, almost deliberately, force existing customers to chose between buy this now or leave. [Second tip for young players: there are two choices in an ultimatum when issuing one you’d better be able to live with both]
The second being that I just I love the tournament scene. Whilst I have many hobbies it is the one I spend the most time and money on. The scene has gone form strength to strength over the past two decades and it has been a great hobby to be involved in. Sure the game has always been the victim of a moderate level of power creep but I think Australia’s composition systems have generally kept this in check and the imbalance was never this exaggerated.
I strongly fear that going forward the top half of tourney fields will be dominated by a select few armies. I’ve always believed that whilst this has always been the perception it has seldom been the reality (when you look at the results) but going forward I do believe that unless players simply stop playing them (I’m not suggesting that by the way) VC and demon armies will be dominant as they are simply too poorly costed to be adjusted by composition.
This in turn I believe will drive less variety on the tournament scene, and for this gamer at least, dramatically decrease the enjoyment of attending tourneys.
Is it the VC or demon players’ fault? No, they are simply playing the list they were given, rather I feel it is either a lack of diligence in the design process or disgraceful strategy intentionally implemented by GW that has driven this change.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Leviathan 2008
Well took along the goblins (formerly run by Sart) to Leviathan. With zero practice games under the belt and it being my first tourney for the year I spent the first two games finding my feet (which I ironically won) then watching the dice pendulum swing back.
The 2500 point army was 4 characters, 6 night goblin blocks with fanatics, 4 artillery pieces, trolls and fast cav.
I ended up on 59/100 battle points on 3 wins from 5 games, above average but not great. I’m going to focus on the two games lost and the lessons learnt about A) my tactics b) my army composition and c) vampire counts.
My first loss came against Andrew Galea who was playing mixed orcs and goblins. From a tactical stand point in this I took too many risks with what was designed to be a defensive risk adverse army. I sent the hoppers screaming down each flank which leads to them dying, I also intended to pit 80% of my army against 30% of his and hope to win the trade off but with the speed of his Wyvern (and my artillery being wildly ineffective) this was futile.
Dice did play some part with seemingly every critical animosity, panic and misfires failing and ensuring that any plan I had never got put into play but in hindsight I should have hung back and forced his elite units to fight their way through a checker board formation whilst I bombarded with the artillery. This would have mitigated the effect of the dice.
This game also taught me that I had too many fanatics to be effective. I couldn’t control their release or my charge angles after they were and it ended up really hurting me in this game and many others. I essentially had spent to hinder myself or wasted about 100 points
The second loss was to Matt Purling’s VC army the game reinforced all my conceptions about the new VC list. Now I’ll admit Matt’s is more towards the abusive end of the spectrum and may be a harsh example to use when forming an opinion.
He had 3 corpse carts, 2 terror causers (black coach and vargulf), book of arkan, +1 to cast and dispel, 2 grave guard units and 8 power dice (so ~13+ dice after bounds).
I gave Matt the lowest possible comp score for this army at 13 dice, +1 to cast, up to -3 to cast against, +1 to dispel, with magical movement everywhere and rock hard units I felt this was justified. Matt also felt my army justified the lowest comp score for whatever his own reasons were.
When deploying I thought about it and realised I simply could not, with out an extreme amount of luck, actually do anything more than 600 points or so of damage to him simply because of the ability to attempt to heal the units 7 times a phase would completely negate my shooting phase and fanatics (which it did) and if his fully ranked units started getting amongst it I’d be in trouble. Never mind the two terror causers against my ld8 army.
This prediction was spot on. I felt Matt made a couple of mistakes essentially throwing his black coach away and splitting his force allowing me a chance to capture a key unit. I made one mistake throwing my trolls into the grave guard. Still I never looked like actually doing any damage as he re-healed back to full strength every magic phase.
But having two terror causers eventually did the trick killing well over 1000 points in the fifth turn and then allowing a set up for another 500 odd in the 6th.
In terms of the army going forward I desperately need to increase the leadership and magic defence of the army so will be introducing orcs into the fold to bump to LD9 and get a little more control over the army as a whole.
I’m also cutting down the fanatics as I felt that during the games where things were going wrong these guys were the biggest culprits.
Then finally I’ll switch hoppers for herders and throw in a giant to give me something terrifying at last.
With the tweaking I should end up with something that deals out less potential damage but with greater reliability and staying power that, most importantly, can step up in the opponent’s magic phase.
The 2500 point army was 4 characters, 6 night goblin blocks with fanatics, 4 artillery pieces, trolls and fast cav.
I ended up on 59/100 battle points on 3 wins from 5 games, above average but not great. I’m going to focus on the two games lost and the lessons learnt about A) my tactics b) my army composition and c) vampire counts.
My first loss came against Andrew Galea who was playing mixed orcs and goblins. From a tactical stand point in this I took too many risks with what was designed to be a defensive risk adverse army. I sent the hoppers screaming down each flank which leads to them dying, I also intended to pit 80% of my army against 30% of his and hope to win the trade off but with the speed of his Wyvern (and my artillery being wildly ineffective) this was futile.
Dice did play some part with seemingly every critical animosity, panic and misfires failing and ensuring that any plan I had never got put into play but in hindsight I should have hung back and forced his elite units to fight their way through a checker board formation whilst I bombarded with the artillery. This would have mitigated the effect of the dice.
This game also taught me that I had too many fanatics to be effective. I couldn’t control their release or my charge angles after they were and it ended up really hurting me in this game and many others. I essentially had spent to hinder myself or wasted about 100 points
The second loss was to Matt Purling’s VC army the game reinforced all my conceptions about the new VC list. Now I’ll admit Matt’s is more towards the abusive end of the spectrum and may be a harsh example to use when forming an opinion.
He had 3 corpse carts, 2 terror causers (black coach and vargulf), book of arkan, +1 to cast and dispel, 2 grave guard units and 8 power dice (so ~13+ dice after bounds).
I gave Matt the lowest possible comp score for this army at 13 dice, +1 to cast, up to -3 to cast against, +1 to dispel, with magical movement everywhere and rock hard units I felt this was justified. Matt also felt my army justified the lowest comp score for whatever his own reasons were.
When deploying I thought about it and realised I simply could not, with out an extreme amount of luck, actually do anything more than 600 points or so of damage to him simply because of the ability to attempt to heal the units 7 times a phase would completely negate my shooting phase and fanatics (which it did) and if his fully ranked units started getting amongst it I’d be in trouble. Never mind the two terror causers against my ld8 army.
This prediction was spot on. I felt Matt made a couple of mistakes essentially throwing his black coach away and splitting his force allowing me a chance to capture a key unit. I made one mistake throwing my trolls into the grave guard. Still I never looked like actually doing any damage as he re-healed back to full strength every magic phase.
But having two terror causers eventually did the trick killing well over 1000 points in the fifth turn and then allowing a set up for another 500 odd in the 6th.
In terms of the army going forward I desperately need to increase the leadership and magic defence of the army so will be introducing orcs into the fold to bump to LD9 and get a little more control over the army as a whole.
I’m also cutting down the fanatics as I felt that during the games where things were going wrong these guys were the biggest culprits.
Then finally I’ll switch hoppers for herders and throw in a giant to give me something terrifying at last.
With the tweaking I should end up with something that deals out less potential damage but with greater reliability and staying power that, most importantly, can step up in the opponent’s magic phase.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
First post - soft topic
Well everyone’s doing it aren’t they this little bogging thing. I’ve always wanted to give it a crack but thought it a little self indulgent and also thought I don’t just want to prattle on about geeky games.
So where did that get me? Right here hopefully in the geeky game only blog, where you get my unabashed opinions, because I’ve done such a great job of moderating them in the past. I also realise this is probably blog number 498 started this year by an Australian gamer, I was two off winning the 500th gamer steak knives!
The first topic was also a bit of struggle. Do I go into my unhealthy fear of the suddenly highly effective vampire magic phase? Nah how about something completely uncontentious: my view painting scores and where we appear to be headed.
It appears every year a new issue with soft scores comes up whether it be: “chipmunking”, what sportsmanship should cover, composition or now, the flavour of 2008, Painting scores.
Now having started out playing Warhammer tournaments back in 3rd edition as a thirteen year old and being about as useful on the table top as Ahkter Kahn, I think I’ve got a bit of perspective on the how and why soft scores came about.
Back then I can remember when tournaments went through the phase when soft scores were being introduced there was a lot of resistance there was the “we need to save the hobby camp” and the “what’s wrong with how we play it now camp”.
Despite this divided everyone seemed to agree that we needed to encourage painted armies to be fielded. [side note: This could have been because people like me used the “three colour camouflage” technique to get past the minimum three colours test, the reason I’m so against static rules for composition is because I’m one of the people who would immediately start trying to rort it]
Now various systems came out encouraging this and generally at the start most of those that I saw made it easily achievable for any player to get the maximum painting score provided some effort was undertaken. After all the intent behind these soft scores, at the start at least, was to ensure that the game was played in such a way that made it enjoyable.
And the warhammer world rejoiced as people became friendlier, armies more balanced and base level of painting quality was adhered to enriching the tourney experience.
Since then systems have morphed, some would say evolved, and I don’t know when it happened but I look at many of the systems now and they are predicated on the view that painting in itself is a fundamental part of competing in the “hobby” and as such should be a source of major competitive advantage.
As often as this is “explained” to me I still can’t grasp the concept. The hobby is called “gaming” which to me implies the playing of a game, to have painting as rewarded in games terms by anything other than personal satisfaction and the acknowledgement of other painters was introduced not by the games designers but by tournament organisers. To have the quality of the paint job judged is not a fundamental part of the game.
To me the intent by the soft scores remains to encourage the game itself to be played in a fashion which promotes enjoyment.
Now sports scores overshot the “accepted standard” style test for sportsmanship but have since largely been reigned back in and composition scores have likewise gone for more of a “lets not penalise tough balanced lists” rather than a lets try and accurately handicap each list like it’s the stall wall gift.
Then we have painting as the soft scores have drifted back in, the painting criteria has become more arduous and skewed toward golden demon level painters.
Some tournaments criteria actually technically provide for that if your army is not to a great, which would mean well above average, standard then it deserves less than average marks. This to me seems absurd.
I am all for soft scores being used as a tool to ensure that the gaming environment is an enjoyable one but I’m against the movement towards the hybrid gaming/painting tournaments which are becoming prevalent.
So where did that get me? Right here hopefully in the geeky game only blog, where you get my unabashed opinions, because I’ve done such a great job of moderating them in the past. I also realise this is probably blog number 498 started this year by an Australian gamer, I was two off winning the 500th gamer steak knives!
The first topic was also a bit of struggle. Do I go into my unhealthy fear of the suddenly highly effective vampire magic phase? Nah how about something completely uncontentious: my view painting scores and where we appear to be headed.
It appears every year a new issue with soft scores comes up whether it be: “chipmunking”, what sportsmanship should cover, composition or now, the flavour of 2008, Painting scores.
Now having started out playing Warhammer tournaments back in 3rd edition as a thirteen year old and being about as useful on the table top as Ahkter Kahn, I think I’ve got a bit of perspective on the how and why soft scores came about.
Back then I can remember when tournaments went through the phase when soft scores were being introduced there was a lot of resistance there was the “we need to save the hobby camp” and the “what’s wrong with how we play it now camp”.
Despite this divided everyone seemed to agree that we needed to encourage painted armies to be fielded. [side note: This could have been because people like me used the “three colour camouflage” technique to get past the minimum three colours test, the reason I’m so against static rules for composition is because I’m one of the people who would immediately start trying to rort it]
Now various systems came out encouraging this and generally at the start most of those that I saw made it easily achievable for any player to get the maximum painting score provided some effort was undertaken. After all the intent behind these soft scores, at the start at least, was to ensure that the game was played in such a way that made it enjoyable.
And the warhammer world rejoiced as people became friendlier, armies more balanced and base level of painting quality was adhered to enriching the tourney experience.
Since then systems have morphed, some would say evolved, and I don’t know when it happened but I look at many of the systems now and they are predicated on the view that painting in itself is a fundamental part of competing in the “hobby” and as such should be a source of major competitive advantage.
As often as this is “explained” to me I still can’t grasp the concept. The hobby is called “gaming” which to me implies the playing of a game, to have painting as rewarded in games terms by anything other than personal satisfaction and the acknowledgement of other painters was introduced not by the games designers but by tournament organisers. To have the quality of the paint job judged is not a fundamental part of the game.
To me the intent by the soft scores remains to encourage the game itself to be played in a fashion which promotes enjoyment.
Now sports scores overshot the “accepted standard” style test for sportsmanship but have since largely been reigned back in and composition scores have likewise gone for more of a “lets not penalise tough balanced lists” rather than a lets try and accurately handicap each list like it’s the stall wall gift.
Then we have painting as the soft scores have drifted back in, the painting criteria has become more arduous and skewed toward golden demon level painters.
Some tournaments criteria actually technically provide for that if your army is not to a great, which would mean well above average, standard then it deserves less than average marks. This to me seems absurd.
I am all for soft scores being used as a tool to ensure that the gaming environment is an enjoyable one but I’m against the movement towards the hybrid gaming/painting tournaments which are becoming prevalent.
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