Monday, December 30, 2013

Dataslates, Formations, and the day 40K died..to the competitive set....

Howdy guys.  40K as we know it is going through some tremendous changes at the moment.  No more are we privy to waiting long periods of time waiting for updates, army updates, etc, the advent of 6th edition brought with it updates and changes that we have never experienced before.  To some of us, 6th edition has heralded a golden age to 40K with armies getting updated with much more frequency, updates to the game in the form of codex supplements, etc.  To others, 6th edition has brought the death knell to 40K.  These vocal minority, usually from the competitive side of things are sounding the alarm that 40K is now d-e-a-d, dead, that balance has been thrown out the window in favor of profits.  Well I wont deny that GW is in the business of making money, a lot of money and from the stand point of being a publicly traded company, they do have an obligation to their shareholders to maximize profits.  Some of the Dataslates, GW's newest digital updates/changes definitely are guilty of this by providing special rules and updates to their holiday bundles.  Of course some of these updates/changes have been one-sided, one just needs to look at the Tau Hunter Cadre dataslate and see that by running this Tau "formation", you get tank hunters and preferred enemy space marines for free.  40K as it stands, as it always stood since my beginning of my 40K "career" has never been balanced; in one edition or another, one faction would be favored over another while another one is nerfed to unplayability.  The examples are there, CSM 3.5, Tyranids 4th edition, Grey Knights 5th edition, Eldar 4th and 6th edition, the list goes on and on. So whats my point?  The fact is GW is giving us players something great, and that is options, options to play the game we love how we want.  Last week GW dropped one of the biggest changes to their core game rules with Stronghold Assault and Escalation.  Now usually, these wouldnt be an issue, since they are after all a supplement like a Battle Missions or Planet Strike.  The difference though is that GW in black and white states that this can be used in normal games of 40K .  That alone is cause for alarm in the competitive scene.  I mean how can we crown a champion when all a person needs to do is pay their 500 bucks for their revenant to add to an already over powered book?  What if people add in their Tau formation to this.  Oh the humanity!!! How do we handle the power gaming maddness??!!  We need to ban units or comp tournaments oh no.  Now hold on there, lets take a step back, really how different is this then before?  I mean didn't we ban forgeworld from most of our tournaments?  Isn't terrain already setup for players when the BRB asks that we take turns in placing the terrain.  Do we not run different mission types then those from the book as the ones in the book are perceived as being unbalanced?  The list is of items that need consideration is a little longer now but the answer remains the same, just allow what you want.  Allow what the players want.  Offer different types of tourneys, ones that stick to just using the BRB and supplements, to anything goes gladiator type games.  In the end, play the game how you want to play it.  And this is the beauty of our hobby my friends, choice.