|
|
Post by michael on Apr 15, 2019 19:07:14 GMT
I ran a 3-week modified Journeyman League recently. One of the chief rules was “no themes.”
It was refreshing. I had completely forgotten how enjoyable this game was without themes there to impose arbitrary restrictions!
Try it.
That is all.
|
|
|
|
Post by anderfreak on Apr 15, 2019 21:13:35 GMT
Yeah, if you've got a big enough group of people who prefer to play that way I think it's legit. I don't personally mind themes at the moment. I think they've gotten the generic "any caster" themes out of the way and going forward I'm hoping they are going to be wildly less restrictive in army composition but more restricted in caster selection.
I also think the steamroller document should have an official "no themes" option, just like they did for divide and conquer and character restrictions in mk3.
|
|
|
|
Post by Soul Samurai on Apr 16, 2019 7:32:03 GMT
I have yet to actually play a theme, so I approve this message! I also think the steamroller document should have an official "no themes" option, just like they did for divide and conquer and character restrictions in mk3. If the widely held theory that themes exist at least partly for balance reasons is true, then I don't think it would really make sense for PP to support "themeless" play on a "competitive" level (I say this based on the understanding that Steamroller is the competitive way of playing WMH)? |
|
|
|
Post by anderfreak on Apr 16, 2019 15:25:54 GMT
I have yet to actually play a theme, so I approve this message! I also think the steamroller document should have an official "no themes" option, just like they did for divide and conquer and character restrictions in mk3. If the widely held theory that themes exist at least partly for balance reasons is true, then I don't think it would really make sense for PP to support "themeless" play on a "competitive" level (I say this based on the understanding that Steamroller is the competitive way of playing WMH)? Hmm, I hope that's a position they reverse. Themes playing against themes haven't seemed, to me, to be any more or less balanced than early Mk3 pre-themes. |
|
|
|
Post by Soul Samurai on Apr 17, 2019 4:51:50 GMT
Hmm, I hope that's a position they reverse. Themes playing against themes haven't seemed, to me, to be any more or less balanced than early Mk3 pre-themes. Even if the game isn't technically more balanced than it was before themes, then themes still have value for balancing reasons because it's easier to balance new stuff as it only has to be balanced against a limited subset of other models, so there's far less interactions to have to sniff out and evaluate (any broken interactions that happen out of theme are inherently balanced by the loss of theme advantages). Therefore there's less limitations on and development time for new models. Plus it does mean that they can release models that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to because their function would overlap with other faction models out of theme (if that makes sense; like they can release a shooty Iron Fang unit because it would have a place in Legion of Steel even though outside of themes it would have too much competition with our other shooty units), so it extends the life of the game itself. In theory at least.
I mean, I don't much like themes, but I can see the argument for them serving a useful purpose is all.
|
|
|
|
Post by anderfreak on Apr 17, 2019 15:53:00 GMT
Hmm, I hope that's a position they reverse. Themes playing against themes haven't seemed, to me, to be any more or less balanced than early Mk3 pre-themes. Even if the game isn't technically more balanced than it was before themes, then themes still have value for balancing reasons because it's easier to balance new stuff as it only has to be balanced against a limited subset of other models, so there's far less interactions to have to sniff out and evaluate (any broken interactions that happen out of theme are inherently balanced by the loss of theme advantages). Therefore there's less limitations on and development time for new models. Plus it does mean that they can release models that they wouldn't otherwise have been able to because their function would overlap with other faction models out of theme (if that makes sense; like they can release a shooty Iron Fang unit because it would have a place in Legion of Steel even though outside of themes it would have too much competition with our other shooty units), so it extends the life of the game itself. In theory at least.
I mean, I don't much like themes, but I can see the argument for them serving a useful purpose is all.
I hadn't thought about that niche unit introduction, that does make it considerably more appealing to buy a unit of shooty iron fangs when they're not competing with winterguard riflemen and widowmakers. They released the trencher long gunners a while ago, but then I haven't seen anything like that recently. In general I think after all the oblivion content gets released the game will be in a considerably more healthy state and the rollout of less restrictive themes with smaller caster restrictions will alleviate a lot of the complaints about the current batch of "any caster, one army subtype" themes. |
|
