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Post by squighopper on Apr 12, 2019 14:23:50 GMT
Of course Warmachine can be played on a more casual mode as Warhammer can be played on a competitive mode with some (a lot) of tweaks. But it's not their... core mode if you know what I mean...
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Post by Charistoph on Apr 12, 2019 14:46:58 GMT
Broad strokes doesn't really cut it, when the precise wording of one rule or a half-inch of distance can decide the game. And yes, you're right that I can check maximum possible threat at any time.
The problem comes when I need to bear that in mind for everything in the army. And when I simultaneously need to keep track of command / control / miscellaneous aura bubbles, keep the objectives controlled, remember which model is which, position important pieces so they don't get instagibbed, blocked in or get left far away, and keep track of 1.3 bajillion special rules--many of which will be unintuitive ("okay, turns out those three skinny guys with sticks all have Shield Guard") or riddled with random exceptions ("okay, I've spent a turn setting this up, so now my anti-cloud and anti-stealth guns shoot at Syvestro....wait, how is that ability different from the Stealth everyone else in the game has?"). or it got changed since I last met it ("cloud wall in place....wait, that guy has Guidance now?")
That's what I mean by stressful. Something is going to get forgotten, and it's often going to cost me the game when played in an unforgiving high-skill environment. And yes, memory is a skill necessary to playing the game, but it's become more important over time, and at a certain point, there was just to much for me to keep track of with my limited ability to play. Compared to board games, even the most complex ones of those still have less junk to keep track of than a typical WM game.
Oddly enough, Warhammer is far worse, and sometimes a little better, at this.
Warhammer is far worse because the number of factions times the number of units makes such memorization horrible. When you compound this with their poorly written ruleset which can easily devolve in to roll offs if you aren't aware enough to discuss them before the game, it can add a huge amount of stress. Yet, it really doesn't the way Warmachine does. The atmosphere in Warhammer is far more laid back than WMH outside of tournaments, because of that more casual game design (and I mean, they are casual about their game design as much as the game being designed to be casual).
Warhammer is far better because usually you will rarely see just one of any unit aside from the HQ/Lords. It is much easier to spam units in Warhammer and still be able to field a lot on the table. And on your side, you have far more to absorb the impact of any questions, which the dice actually help out with. In WMH, unless you're focusing on horde recursion, you rarely have enough to absorb mistakes as easily with as one usually does in Warhammer. Add on to that the intention of competitiveness that Warhammer lacks, and WMH will generally provide a more stressful environment.
Interestingly enough, stressful situations is where a person grows the most. Either they will rise above their expectations, or gain exposure to develop resistance to that stress.
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Post by autocorrecthaslimits on Apr 12, 2019 18:48:10 GMT
Now i dont know legion or other games, but heres a factor ive noticed in the lack of new blood in my state. Something I think that gets missed sometimes is how new players perceive stuff. 40k/AoS is not balanced as a whole, but you always have options. Every faction has plentiful anti big and anti horde options. So while if you play vs knights with pure horde killing, you'll likely get hosed, but if you buy a bunch of melta or lascannons (or faction equivalent) and that dudes very expensive investment is screwed. And each faction has multiple ways to bring tools, albeit with imho worse internal balance. Because of the 1 list nature of 40k, you're more likely to graviate towards TAC lists that mix and match different unit types. The larger nature of these games also gives more freedom to have redundancies within a list (anti tank, anti horde, anti psyker, objective, screening, etc). Coupled with the nature of d6 the spread of damage is smaller than 2d6, though more random. AKA 600 lasguns will kill a titan eventually, whereas in WMH hard counters are more frequent, those gunmages are not killing cryx BI slayers no matter how the dice go So most newbies feel like if i only had more antitank, or ill get this new unit, or use this chapter tactic, I'll get them next time. Not so the case for alot of matchups in WMH.
WMH I think has always been a bit demoralizing at first, with assasination being a demise of many newbies (I started with caine1, lemme tell you guys I am VERY cagey with casters after getting killed literaly my first 30 games). And you learn to get around it. But with themes, and the game being balanced around the 2 list steamroller, just showing up with whatever can end up as pure misery. And guess what, no matter how hard I try hammerstrike into banes fails, iona mulches merc/minion infantry heavy period, steeheads ain't winning vs medium infantry spam, etc. And that is just frustrating to feel like you've wasted a themes worth of models. 40k, especially elite units, has models that go in and out of style but your troops, tanks, and leaders are mostly stable accross time. Im tired, and newbies in my meta are also fed up and stopped showing up, of shit like DH just raping everything but specific hard counters. And yes, we should git gud, but after a certain point of us being assulted with cid tuned armies vs our old stuff, people just started going back to other games. If your gonna get stomped least the other stuff looks cool was a quote i heard 2 weeks ago from a newbie who dropped.
On a positive note, this is why I'm psyched for the oblivion release. Everyone should get some new stuff and hopefully some old themes will finally get the tools to be decent into the meta. At the worst, ill still buy the morrowan archon to proxy st celestine cool looking model.
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Post by challenger on Apr 13, 2019 8:39:24 GMT
I personally think that 2 list pairings should be a thing of the past. They contribute massively to people getting no fun games where they want to bring a fun list, with vulnerabilities, but run into a list that takes advantage of those vulnerabilities.
List chicken is another terrible experience.
Honestly think warmachine should consider implementing a draft feature. It would allow you to start playing more situational models you never could risk bringing in a 2 list pairing due to getting punished. You also could aggressively counterpick your opponent's options, so if they are just going
I pick karchev and 2 marauders
then you go "i pick these weaponmasters who kill marauders real good"
and they go "i pick more marauders"
you just keep picking weaponmasters.
realistically it would force the khador player in that example to change up their build and bring a mix of tools rather than spamming and getting counter picked.
But that's just a personal thing i'd like. I have seen too many people try to play something fun and exciting that just gets its face kicked in by a refined meta list and then the player gets demoralised and doesn't want to play anymore. I also think WMH set itself up as a "competition at all costs" game and as much as people bemoan the players for doing steamroller 75 only with bare plastic models on a completely flat board, that is the culture of the game, and the reputation it has from other communities.
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Post by cygnarstronk on Apr 13, 2019 11:55:50 GMT
yeah list chicken kills the game for good.
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Post by netdragon on Apr 13, 2019 15:41:36 GMT
I personally think that 2 list pairings should be a thing of the past. They contribute massively to people getting no fun games where they want to bring a fun list, with vulnerabilities, but run into a list that takes advantage of those vulnerabilities. List chicken is another terrible experience. Honestly think warmachine should consider implementing a draft feature. It would allow you to start playing more situational models you never could risk bringing in a 2 list pairing due to getting punished. You also could aggressively counterpick your opponent's options, so if they are just going I pick karchev and 2 marauders then you go "i pick these weaponmasters who kill marauders real good" and they go "i pick more marauders" you just keep picking weaponmasters. realistically it would force the khador player in that example to change up their build and bring a mix of tools rather than spamming and getting counter picked. But that's just a personal thing i'd like. I have seen too many people try to play something fun and exciting that just gets its face kicked in by a refined meta list and then the player gets demoralised and doesn't want to play anymore. I also think WMH set itself up as a "competition at all costs" game and as much as people bemoan the players for doing steamroller 75 only with bare plastic models on a completely flat board, that is the culture of the game, and the reputation it has from other communities.
or a roster format like Kill Team's.
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Post by Charistoph on Apr 13, 2019 17:07:31 GMT
Or set up a system using the Specialists, but that could be a death knell for Themes ("Oh, darn!", I hear as the answer coming back). You can either set up your Battlegroup to be Specialists that you change out or significant portion of the rest of the army be the Specialists that you swap out. It would technically be a 1 1/2 list format from that perspective.
Of course, the other alternative is convert WMH to handle larger model collections on the table like Warhammer, so that TAC lists don't have to be so tight (or impossible).
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Post by cainuslupus on Apr 13, 2019 19:13:27 GMT
Lately I've seen Guerilla Miniatures Warmachine battle report and articles in Bols. PP might've started marketing campaign.
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Post by challenger on Apr 14, 2019 0:44:03 GMT
I personally think that 2 list pairings should be a thing of the past. They contribute massively to people getting no fun games where they want to bring a fun list, with vulnerabilities, but run into a list that takes advantage of those vulnerabilities. List chicken is another terrible experience. Honestly think warmachine should consider implementing a draft feature. It would allow you to start playing more situational models you never could risk bringing in a 2 list pairing due to getting punished. You also could aggressively counterpick your opponent's options, so if they are just going I pick karchev and 2 marauders then you go "i pick these weaponmasters who kill marauders real good" and they go "i pick more marauders" you just keep picking weaponmasters. realistically it would force the khador player in that example to change up their build and bring a mix of tools rather than spamming and getting counter picked. But that's just a personal thing i'd like. I have seen too many people try to play something fun and exciting that just gets its face kicked in by a refined meta list and then the player gets demoralised and doesn't want to play anymore. I also think WMH set itself up as a "competition at all costs" game and as much as people bemoan the players for doing steamroller 75 only with bare plastic models on a completely flat board, that is the culture of the game, and the reputation it has from other communities.
or a roster format like Kill Team's.
How does kill teams format work i am not familiar
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shiver
Junior Strategist
Posts: 150
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Post by shiver on Apr 14, 2019 8:00:28 GMT
or a roster format like Kill Team's.
How does kill teams format work i am not familiar before an event, you build a roster of 200points worth of dudes. (this includes your leaders, troopers, heavy weapons, specialists and wargear, all that jazz.) when you are assigned an opponent and a scenario, you then look at your opponent's list of 200 points and then each of you constructs your 100 point list to play the game. In larger events this is a timed phase, though honestly, I haven't normally seen the need for this to be timed, its a fairly quick process. After using it, it is the single best way I have seen a miniatures game do "list selection" though I think it works best on kill team because it's a smaller game, I'm not sure how well it would work with a larger game like WMH or WH40k, though if you just allowed 150 points worth of stuff and it was tied to one or two warcasters, I could see that being relatively quick. at least, no longer than typical list selection has taken in some events. If you haven't played kill team, its worth it almost just for this alone. (Kill-team is a really well-done skirmish game, you should check it out if you haven't.)
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cain
Junior Strategist
Posts: 243
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Post by cain on Apr 14, 2019 9:21:30 GMT
Kill team also has similarities to how you choose a team in Guild ball. You have a roster of 12 models. When you see what faction you play against and his roster, each player choose a team of 6 models. Its a specific procedure for the selection prosess. Bouth players choose in secret 2 models (captain and mascot). After revealing those each player chooses one more and so on.
As said it works better with less models.
I think the closest thing you get in warmahordes is one list with a sideboard.
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Post by netdragon on Apr 14, 2019 13:00:56 GMT
Also, the Kill Team roster app is great for this as you can add/remove units really fast getting confirmation on the points total.
Of course, this would be very complicated to apply with the current Themes, that also makes using specialists very complicated as well.
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Post by Charistoph on Apr 14, 2019 15:32:27 GMT
Basically it sounds like CoI with Specialists.
Kill Team used to be different, though. You had one list at 200 points and you brought the lot.
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Post by netdragon on Apr 14, 2019 17:42:30 GMT
Basically it sounds like CoI with Specialists. Kill Team used to be different, though. You had one list at 200 points and you brought the lot.
Let's not mix up things here. We are not talking about running smaller warmachine games, but using other ways for list building for the current size. Like "bring 100 pts of models and choose 75pts for every match". OF COURSE the current themes make this a very complicated issue.
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Post by Charistoph on Apr 14, 2019 20:35:22 GMT
Basically it sounds like CoI with Specialists. Kill Team used to be different, though. You had one list at 200 points and you brought the lot.
Let's not mix up things here. We are not talking about running smaller warmachine games, but using other ways for list building for the current size. Like "bring 100 pts of models and choose 75pts for every match". OF COURSE the current themes make this a very complicated issue.
All I was doing was translating it in to WMH game modes. Kill Team IS the smaller 40K game, even if they have changed it to more of a Specialist roster set up since the last time I read its rules.
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