What books, sheets, supplements, other rules should we allow?

[andalucien]

I'm glad I have two friends up in the "Only full codexes" option.  Let's go start our own island nation somewhere.

[andalucien]

One comment I have is that it's possible that Escalation and Stronghold will be more high-quality material (maybe even more tournament-suitable) than these recent digital releases.   So it's possible that some folks (maybe even me) would want them included without the digital stuff.

[Sir_Prometheus]

Hey, yeah, and maybe it'll have unicorns.

Something we NEED is clarification of the fortification rules, which are not only unclear in some places, but actually have huge gaping holes.  Also, I think all Xenos players would like to see non-imperial buildings of some form.

But yeah, Unicorns. 

[PhoenixFire]

Newest rumors are saying escalation is not nerfing D weapons for regular 40k games. They are also saying it's NOT an expansion like the old planet strike or cities of death but is just for any and all 40k games

Not like it's up to GW though, as always it's up to the TOs and I dont see super heavies in 40k being the norm

[Sir_Prometheus]

Old quote from I forget who:

"If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have?  Four.  Calling a tail a leg doesn't make it a leg"

[Chase]

For what it's worth, my convo with the GW rep last week seemed to make a couple things pretty clear.

Str D was a thing and not changed.  He went out of his way to tell me that when players mention that they don't have access to Str D weapons that they can always take that big fortification thing.

Also, he said 3 times that Escalation is "an expansion and not a supplement, meaning that it's intended to be part of the normal 40k rules as soon as it's released."

[Sir_Prometheus]

They can intend it to be part of the main rules.  That doesn't necessarily make it a good idea.  We're at the point where we all realize that now, right? 

[Chase]

Yup, but I'm not at the point where I feel that it's automatically a bad idea.

I can promise that there will be events at Battleground that allow superheavies very soon.  We had plans for 1 (2 if you include the Megabattle) planned before this book was announced.  Another 1 will likely get added sometime in Jan / Feb.

[andalucien]

Hmm, obviously way to early to draw any conclusions, but this post from someone who claims to already have Escalation makes it sound like it suffers from a bit of "Inquisition-itis":

----------

Anyway, have had a flick through Escalation and I was frankly disappointed. As far as I can tell it's a cut-and-paste of the rules for Superheavies, Gargantuan Creatures, D Weapons and the 'Big Template Weapons' rules, straight from the Apocalypse rulebook, with a £30 price sticker slapped on.

There were copies of the data sheets for all Baneblade variants, Thunderhawks, Stompas, Lord Of Skulls, Harridan, Tessaract Vault, Obelisk, Transcendant C'tan, Tau Flying thing (Didn't get a good look at this one) and the Eldar (and Dark Eldar, apparently...) Revenant Titan. I don't recognise the Tau flyer from the Apocalypse book, but all of the others are cut-and-paste from Apocalypse.

There were two new missions and that seems to be about it.
K.
-------------------------------

[Benjamin]

Strength D in regular games is a bad idea, from both hobby and competitive perspectives. It improves an army, but it doesn't improve the game.

[Mike_k]

Its going to be tough to do consistent comp because no matter what some people get turned away, shunned, shut down etc.

Also its very hard to judge what direction things are going half way through an edition cycle that has bucked and broken every GW trend and rule from all previous editions.  Supposedly the edition cycle will be updated by the start of 2015.  Who knows whats powerful now and if it will still be powerful then.

At no point in 5th edition did you routinely see the top tables at every major tourney or event littered so consistently with the same 4 armies as you do now.  In that same token never did we see 4 consistently powerful armies routinely taking down victories either like we do now with Tau, Eldar, Daemons, and SM.  the 5th edition GT scene clearly showed the effects of codex creep s every new release started winning a lot up to GK and then GK split pretty evenly with Crons through the remainder of 5th.

A year + is a long time to wait to start implementing and designing comp as literally another entire GT season and ETC cycle will have passed before the expected update cycle is complete.  Yet with new content rolling out so rapidly maintaining and updating a viable and meaningful comp system would also be very hard.  Especially for an entity like BG that typically runs events monthly or at worst bi monthly.

I voted to keep it all in play lets use this year as OUR beta test to see where GW takes us for 2015 and beyond.  I have always believed this release model would be better for the hobby.  More viable armies for longer periods with easier fixes (mini releases, WD updates, new units etc.)  Its easier to pinpoint if a mini release is broken vs an entire codex.  Screamer star didnt even start to show itself until like 3 months after the codex release (not that screamer star is broken, its debatable) but its an example of how tough it is to determine whats good/bad/broken in each codex without months of the entire community pouring over it.

[Chase]

Solid post.

[andalucien]

Yeah mike...  seems like a very constructive approach there.   Nice post.

[andalucien]

Why does battlegrounds have to run our own personal beta test?  Why can't the community as a whole come together?  You know, pool our resources? 

Does anybody know how the "generally accepted comp" system actually came about in fantasy?  I don't actually know much about it at all, other than having heard people say that the community eventually fixed a totally broken ruleset and the game eventually rebounded a bit after a year or so.  That's what we're looking at here I think.

[MM3791]

Well, Mike Brandt and Reecius (2 of the 3 most prominent TO's in the USA) have both posted open questions on their blogs recently, asking people for ideas about what to do to maintain a positive competitive environment.  They both seem to be open to ignoring or changing rules published by GW, and have both been openly critical of the nature Codex: Inquisition.  So I wouldn't say this is off the table.

Do those guys even play 40k? I thought they only played Fantasy. Fantasy has always had a comped system, right now you're comparing apples to tomatoes