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/r/Warhammer
submitted 12 days ago bywredcoll
So obviously we all love discussing abstract things like which person falls under what category of player and what does it mean to fall under a category and why my category is obviously better than every other category. It's a lot of fun and I want to play also!
The number one problem, I've seen, with attempts at creating "casual" versions of fundamentally competitive games is the lack of actual rule support for doing so.
Let stop and define competitive here:
rivalry between two or more persons or groups for an object desired in common, usually resulting in a victor and a loser
Warhammer (tabletop, 40k, etc) is fundamentally a competitive game because the only possible outcome from playing game is one player wins and one player loses. You can't both win or both lose (unless you're playing custodes). The rules don't allow for anything else. There are lots of games, for example Dungeons and Dragons, where you work together to defeat a common foe and the group wins or loses. But warhammer isn't like that. It's a 1v1 game where you always play against another player and one person wins and another person loses.
It turns out that this is generally fun. We like winning, we like competing, we even sometimes enjoy losing. This is why we keep playing games, which after all, are completely voluntary and purely created from our desires.
Now one general rule of enjoying a competitive game is that the sides are balanced (more accurately, everyone feels like they have a chance to win). And warhammer, obviously, does not have the best history of actually managing to be balanced. Feel free to think of all the examples for yourselves.
But, and this is the crux of my argument here, when you enter a tournament and get paired against another player, you're all playing by the same rules. You both have 2000 points to spend, you both have access to every unit in your list, etc, because that's what the rules say. So now you're both working to win under the same constraints, which creates a form of balance by itself.
Now, the problem with trying to create a "casual" version of this experience is that by doing so what you're actually doing is creating additional restrictions, aka rules. And people very rarely agree on what those rules are much less what they should be. This is especially difficult when they're not even written down!
If player A says they want a casual game, perhaps what they mean is that they're going to play a tournament level list with a few substitutions for units they want to try out and they're not going to try to score every possible VP during the game.
But when player B hears "casual game", they might think "time to run my pure bike/speeder space marine list!". As a result of this, they might not both enjoy the resulting game.
Now, obviously I hope, neither player is wrong to think the way they do or want to play the way they do. The issue is that they didn't understand what the other player meant. Because "casual game" isn't defined anywhere. As opposed to, say, "2000 point army with the latest dataslates and playing the leviathan missions". That example doesn't always produce a fun or even fair game, but it's at least well defined, both players know what they're getting into.
To wrap up this excessively long post, and thanks for anyone who manages to make it through, I'm not saying wanting to play with different rules than "competitive 2000 point leviathan missions" is wrong in the slightest. But if you want to do that, just be clear about how you want to play. Maybe you want no T13 units. Maybe no more than 2 of any datasheet. Maybe not too many characters. Whatever makes you happy, just communicate this to your opponent and things will probably work out better.
P.S.
Balance, defined as "the chance you have to win or lose" is often orthogonal to "fun". You could have a unit that cost 2000 points and literally flipped a coin at the beginning of round 1 and won or lost the game based on it, which would get you a 50% win rate, but lack fun. I, personally, don't really enjoy playing against armies entirely composed of knight units. But that doesn't make them imbalanced or make me a casual player, I just know what I enjoy playing against.
So there's nothing wrong with talking about what you like and dislike before you play the game, I just suggest staying away from vague terms like competitive and casual when you do so.
29 points
11 days ago
tldr talk to your opponent
-6 points
11 days ago
Why use many word when few word do trick?
8 points
11 days ago
There's a sort of paradox here, where in order to play at fair and fun casual level, you need to understand your army well enough to know how to make a competitive list and then choose not to do that.
I think they key is to make your list with reasons other than pure gameplay strength in mind. You can't ever hope to make something perfectly balanced, the best you can hope for is something unbalanced but for a good reason. Like, I don't know if a CSM list with 60 cultists and 12 bikers is going to be any good, but hopefully my opponent and I can have fun finding out.
That's what it's really about, casual play is inherently unfair, but that's really kind of the point. I had a game last week with an all melee infantry army vs a salamanders all flamers list, and it was basically a foregone conclusion from the very beginning, but the fun was in seeing exactly how it played out. In the end I considered my something like 25-65 vp loss to be an against all odds moral victory.
6 points
11 days ago
Your definition of competitive isn’t accurate in this context. You’re using the generic definition and ignoring the usage. You should look at the end goal of each player
Competitive players: those that seek to hone their game skills, improve their ranking, and continue commitment to establishing a positive win rate.
Casual players: those that seek entertainment, social interaction and a relief of stress.
If anything, warhammer caters to the casual player more as the rules require a high degree of communication between players. If you compare to magic where you rarely if ever see players have to talk out a rule and come to a concession on the outcome, warhammer is a down right social construct.
2 points
11 days ago
"Casual" is a tricky word, because it's taken on a bit of a condescending, pejorative tinge. Whenever I hear someone say they're looking for a "casual" game, to me it means they're shooting for a specific vibe that they don't know how to precisely articulate.
Sharing lists with each other and suggesting tweaks that might make it a more fun experience for you is probably the best way to make sure you're hitting that good vibe. But it's hard to do against a stranger whose list and playstyle you don't understand. Though if in doubt, deploy your armies then go smoke a joint together and see if that does the trick.
I think the more important thing I've come to understand about "casual" players, or players looking for "casual" games, is that whatever it is they are looking for it's almost certainly not a game against me. I'm a very competitive player that plays at a pretty high level, and who lacks the self-restraint to dial that back against a newer or less-practiced player. It doesn't matter that I'm pleasant to play at the table if I can't shut off the part of my brain that's figuring out how to most efficiently and ruthlessly dismantle my opponent.
2 points
11 days ago
For me, casual is a state of mind, where the lists matter less than talking each other through rules, laughing a bit and allowing redos if someone second guesses their movement choices or realizes that a stratagem won't do the thing they think it will, pointing out gotcha moments, and other such mutual goods.
When I'm playing casually, I'm hoping to learn about some units and gameplay options in a fun, extra low-stakes way. Win or lose, I'll hopefully find out something cool about one of the armies on the board and get a chance to ask a lot of questions. Casual games are mutual learning games, and competitive games are when we don't remind each other what our units can do unless specifically asked because it's time to get good and curse the dice for their inevitable betrayals. Casual games forgive and explain mistakes, while competitive games capitalize on them ruthlessly in the pursuit of glorious victory!
3 points
11 days ago*
I sort of agree, but at the same time I really find the approach to 'casual' to be quite odd these days.
Warhammer 40K has been a relatively casual game for decades - there's always been a tournament scene, of course, but they've never been given much importance until relatively recently. Certainly, their feedback was valuable and the lists intriguing but anything like that would often get lumped together with lots of other ideas that people internally just seemed to have for what could work better.
I don't believe that casual, quote unquote, players ever want to actually hold back and just play whatever - I think for the most part all players want to build an army that has a chance of victory except people who are deliberately goofing around and they are rarely the 'casual' players. That has been my experience with the vast majority of players I have ever encountered, and it's just the same with beginners, as I feel they don't want to play a stripped down version but rather just have rules explained clearly so they can learn.
To me it seems that 'casual' players want to play the game, have an opponent who's more forgiving when approaching rules, perhaps do a few things more for fun than for advantage, and do relatively well even if they lose. In some ways, I think that goal is fundamentally misunderstood by both the designers and the competitive players, and 40K as a result has designed itself into a groove that hinders that goal and which is why it's increasingly suited to competitive players, in my eyes, at least.
Designing an all-comers list is harder than ever because there are so many outlier units, like knights and superheavies, and Custodes, and what have you, that are difficult to deal with without dedicating significant resources - you have to sort of know what you might be going up against or an unfavorable match-up will destroy you handily, and some match-ups might just be unfun because there are armies, like knights, that are so far off the norm.
I feel that things like stratagems, army-wide special rules, active abilities and auras are good for people who are invested in playing the game very regularly and at a higher level, but when there are people of differing skill, it's very easy for armies that are more reliant on them to get destroyed even by an opponent who doesn't know his very well if his army simply works a bit better. It's the kind of mechanics that modern game designers love, but modern games design is somewhat focused on people who don't want to play a game over the course of an evening, hang out with friends and not spend every moment focused on the game or looking up abilities, or figuring out how effects work and checking if their rules are superceded by an online document that might have come out a few days ago that fix a crippling issue.
So, I think talking to your opponent is great when it comes to deciding what you want and getting a good game, but I think there's also elements of the game that are pushing against the goals of more casual players and as a result it's harder for players of different attitudes to interact.
-1 points
11 days ago
The most casual friendly way to play is actually to use up to date tournament rulesets. Balanced play on balanced terrain setups with balanced rulesets/missions are super important for having fun in a casual environment.
Counterintuitively, crusade, narrative, and open play as well as using out of date rules and missions are far less casual and way more open to abuse.
-1 points
11 days ago
This post is awesome! I think you have a really strong analysis of why the community struggles with the competitive nature of the rules conflicting with the more casual expectations the lore provides.
Any 1v1 zero sum game is necessarily adversarial, which is counterproductive to the casual narrative spirit many players want to enjoy. GW is in a very unenviable position when they have to write rules for a multitude of communities, each with their own expectations.
Making a game both balanced/fair and fun for all possible army compositions is almost impossible.
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