The Future of BG 40k Events

[Benjamin]

It should be clear by now Games Workshop has achieved its goal in creating a decidedly casual game (versus a competitive game). Therefore, for future events I believe it makes sense to embrace that notion, rather than fight the tide and shoehorn the game into competitive events.

Initially, I'm thinking of events that place the greatest emphasis on Best Overall / Renaissance Man. For those unfamiliar, this system would reward players equally for performance as well as for painting and conversion. I'd love feedback on this particular point.

Because of the greater importance in painting/conversion, multiple paint judges could score armies, rather than one. Whether an average or cumulative score, those results would be less subjective. (Note: Currently, BG uses a painting rubric to score armies, which is the least subjective method, and we could have three judges all score using rubrics.)

It could be too that the days of competitive-style events are behind us for now. Or they'll resemble more 500 point games and low-value Attacker-Defender style events. Perhaps more Kill Team games, Campaigns, Tanksgiving/Monster Mash events are in order.

What would you like to see?

[Grandmaster Steve]

I think you may have something im curious to what others say.

[Chase]

I would like to see Ben decide that he dislikes his current job and wants to make half as much (or less) working for BG.

[spoonsaur]

I would like to see Ben decide that he dislikes his current job and wants to make half as much (or less) working for BG.

i voulnteer myself as tribute

[Grimwulfe]

I think you will lose a good portion of your tourny player base if you focus on this.  Competitive games is what had 30-40 people coming to BG for the tournies.  The more casual tournies were much lower in attendance.  To jump the shark and say competitive tournies are no more is a huge mistake.

Also I think it is to early especially without seeing the 7th edition rules to claim this.  BG made a statement on the competitive scene with multiple high attendance tournies to ignore that and push it to the way side is a mistake

Or so I believe.

[MM3791]

I think you will lose a good portion of your tourny player base if you focus on this.  Competitive games is what had 30-40 people coming to BG for the tournies.  The more casual tournies were much lower in attendance.  To jump the shark and say competitive tournies are no more is a huge mistake.

Also I think it is to early especially without seeing the 7th edition rules to claim this.  BG made a statement on the competitive scene with multiple high attendance tournies to ignore that and push it to the way side is a mistake

Or so I believe.

Agreed.


That's not to say that there can't be both, or that competitive tournaments can't be comped in the future.. but to abort them entirely is a mistake.

I did very much enjoy the Storm & Shadows Campaign that we had last summer, and that was also very competitive. So I would definitely like to see more of those, because I really enjoy strategy games that have more then just battles, but also economic & travel components that give the military part far more strategy and depth. It's like it justifies where & why the battles are taking place. Like if an enemy army is too big to confront head on, but a player can blow up their starport to slow them down. Or if an enemy army is getting too big, a player could capture their generator to take away some of their resources. Or build an anti-air battery to deny enemy air support at a critical choke point. It gives the player more options.

So I would heavily lobby for those types of games.

[robpro]

I agree with Troy. Maybe we should look at the sky before we decide it's falling.

[Mike D]

People should only be allowed to win if they actually painted and converted there own models, I know I am sick of "ringer" army's winning best appearance 90%of the time.

[Grimwulfe]

And how would you enforce that?  How could you argue that someone didnt paint their own models?  Also if someone paid their own money to have it done then by all means they should be able to reap the benefits. 

Now mind you I am biased in this purely because Dean painted my army.  But tell me why I couldnt get best appearance reward when I spent months converting my army, months coming up with the concept, months building a mountain to display this army. 

Now would you consider that a ringer army?  Because I wouldnt.  But back to my point unless I told you Dean painted my army how would you know?  Thinking from a TO stand point how could you verify that without having personal knowledge where I got it? Hindering awards for people just because they had someone do something they couldnt isnt beneficial to the tourny scene.  It doesnt help anyone. 

I personally feel that regardless who painted an army etc if you have a great looking army then I would much rather play you then someone who has 3 color mins or primed models.

[robpro]

Well, there might be something to the idea of a limit on how many times the same army can win best appearance. We want to keep people painting and innovating, knowing the same guy always wins might stifle that. Im not saying poorly painted armies should win, but it's nice to see that award go to new people too. But that's not a 7th ed specific discussion.

[Grimwulfe]

Rob that's a great point and I can see the merits of that much more then I can see out right negating someone due to how it was painted.

[andalucien]

Yeah, I mean, it would work out better for me if there was some sort of requirement that all armies be completely made by the person playing, but, I still don't like the idea

- it just encourages people to lie about who painted what
- the REAL motivation is to get more beautiful armies on the table in the event, right?  Beauty is beauty even if it's something someone else made
- yeah, are we really going to ban the Mountain from participating in appearance awards because one part of it (the paint) was applied by someone else?   This is not uncommon, like my old Necrons (now someone else's necrons) were originally an army I bought from PaintedFigs and then I started modifying it heavily from there.

I do like the idea of saying something like... an army can only win an appearance award once every 6 months at BG.  We don't want people to say, "well, Erich is going to be at that tourney, so I guess best painted is off the table".

[MM3791]

I'm a gamer, not a hobbyist. Which means I never paint my own models, I always hire someone to do it for me.

[Dalymiddleboro]

I'm a gamer, not a hobbyist. Which means I never paint my own models, I always hire someone to do it for me.

Who do you hire? I'm looking for a reasonable price to paint my stuffs.

[AstartesXXVI]

[Disclaimer: I know I'm not a BG regular, so please take anything I say here with a grain of salt.]

As part of a group with much more limited resources and a more niche community, I have a lot of envy for the situation at BG. A big beautiful store with excellent tables, great staff, gorgeous terrain, open late enough that any day is a viable game day, and all that. I can only speculate from my position, but in all of those things, I see a lot of opportunity as far as 40k is concerned. Speaking strictly from gameplay's side, I don't think it is a good idea to limit yourselves to what I've called "THE ONE TRUE GAME" approach. There's lots of ways to play 40k; there should be lots of ways to have events if you really want to take full advantage.

I learned a long time ago that if you try to put on the brakes and modify to please everyone you will fail (it's not possible to please everyone, period. Please the largest amount you can and move on). Having a definitive standard that you follow through on and reuse allows people to become familiar with the event style and the approach, and it becomes habitual.

More firm stances on required painting would probably cut back a lot on WAAC netlisting drama (not a hard requirement, but a lighter partial one would do the trick, just so that people can't just build the hot new list the week before and show up with an army of unfinished models or stinking of Simple Green). This would in turn clear up a lot of perceived negativity about "that guy" at tournaments and make the final score listing look less lopsided toward the power builds.

Also, the idea about limiting consecutive painting awards is a good one, there is already little motivation to bother painting up for a BG event if there is no requirement; even less when your effort would be wasted.

Most of you see me as a person who doesn't play at BG events, but I see myself more as a person who USED to, and wants to again. I have a club to deal with and rarely get to play at all, nevermind in an event. So BG events used to be my time off, I would like to see them have a resurgence so that I can have that back.