Competitiveness for Casual

[No One]

Place for derail from the maleceptor thread.

bigpig said:

Unless there is a social contract in place which limits what you can take, such as "in this narrative scenario the nid army has blah blah and blah and the imperium is comprised of X Y and Z"..... or, "I'm going to intentionally take a weaker list because of the skill level/model choice of my adversary", the players will typically take what gives them the best chance of success. Now, at times a player will, in fact, take a gimp list because they really luv the fluff of a certain concept, but even then they will typically try to tune it as best they can within the framework of the fluff idea.

See, this is where different players/areas differ. You have people who just don't do that (either because they don't want to, or because they're not good enough at it. Or just because they don't have the models), so that the list does just look like a plonk of whatever they had on the shelf. Sometimes it'll sort of work out into a coherent list. Sometimes it won't.

Like, deliberately taking bad choices for fluff reasons, then taking other bad choices deliberately for no reason? Unlikely. But taking bad choices for fluff reasons, then not optimising the rest of the army and just taking decent stuff/good stuff that doesn't necessarily mesh? Quite likely.

[mattblowers]

Jan 2, 2020 11:12:21 GMT bigpig said:

Here is my take on this thread divergence;

Unless there is a social contract in place which limits what you can take, such as "in this narrative scenario the nid army has blah blah and blah and the imperium is comprised of X Y and Z"..... or, "I'm going to intentionally take a weaker list because of the skill level/model choice of my adversary", the players will typically take what gives them the best chance of success. That is true "fluff" based gaming. It is a mutually decided upon way to play. Now, at times a player will, in fact, take a gimp list because they really luv the fluff of a certain concept, but even then they will typically try to tune it as best they can within the framework of the fluff idea. This is the exception. Beyond this, players rarely go into a game.... "pickup" otherwise bringing a (please do not swear) chance to win. It is inherent human nature to want to triumph in the game

This whole competitive vs fluffy argument tends to fall flat with me as half the people who say they are playing fluff games are actually trying their damn hardest two win, but are hobbled by lack of skill and model choice. If a players is not skilled but is doing their hardest to bring the toughest list possible without a scenario framework or guidelines then they are playing competitive, not fluffy... they just aren't good at it. Too often people rail against "tournaments" and "competitive" players.... then turn around and bring some netlist or hard as possible combination to a "fun pickup game."

My last example of this was a player who brought an Iron Hands list to a 1500pt fun event comprised of Repulsor Executioner, 2 Relic Leviathans, Eliminators, 2 TFCs, and other IH bs and then complained about OP lists took him down when he lost because of OP lists

It is all perspective

^ This. So much this. Competitive vs. fluffy is an almost meaningless distinction UNLESS you precisely define the terms.

Fluffiest game I ever had was in 7th when I bet a clubmate that if I took an army without synapse and he took the hardest netlist at the time that my lack of synapse could kill more points of my army than he could. We called the game in the middle of turn 3 when I was up by a huge margin. THAT is a fluffy game. And it was a hoot. It starts with a premise/story that is not centered on who wins or loses this game. It could be part of a narrative or come with restrictions on types of units that allowed or banned. It might even have a nearly impossible win condition that is fun (ie. hordes of gribbles that keep regenerating against a Tau/SM gun line) for both parties.

Also I believe that fluff/narrative games are almost impossible to pull off. I typically won't play those type of games except with club mates that I really trust and that I have years of experience playing with. Then I know we both have an understanding of what is meant by a fluffy list. I had a guy in 7th try to argue that his riptide wing with 2 Y'varna was a "fun and fluffy list". The whole room had a good laugh at that. Too often people hide behind a "fluffy/narrative" facade because they are afraid of facing the perception of how hard the competitive scene can be.

When we see someone ask for advice of how to play a list we assume they mean competitive. Even if they don't the advice is often the same. If you play our big monsters in most cases you are playing the game in hard mode. No matter what tactics or advice anyone can give, you will be blown off the table before you can make it into effective range if you face a competent player with even average models.

Further complicating the discussions is that often the question will be asked something like "How would X model do against Space Marines..etc?" The question usually is really asking "can X kill Y." That question is really a different thing altogether as it has implications for player ability, terrain, and meta that all deeply affect the potential answer to that question. So, for me at least, the easiest way to answer it is based on ITC missions with standardized terrain in a competitive meta. If you take the variables out of the equation the answer is much easier to predict.

Finally tone. Tone matters a lot. Take this OP for instance. The question was how well does the new maleceptor strat work. My assertion is that it isn't worth the CP or model point investment because of the way the power works. Some really took offense to that and stated how they were winning all their games with it and it works just fine. Let's just break this one example. Here are a list of some things that could be going on:
1. I really have no idea what I am talking about. This is entirely possible, but my experience matches the meta at large and that is the only constant we can measure it against.
2. I am a terrible player. Again, entirely possible. My advice is based on my experience, so then my advice should be heeded by all other terrible players.
3. The person asserting it is a tactical genius. This is also quite possible. What is your record? Where/whom have you played? What is your list and how do you use it? When these follow up questions are not answered I tend to suspect the messenger.
4. My experience is against a different level of competition. Probably. The GT I played in had Richard Siegler, John Lennon, and Mark Perry. I addition it had 3 other GT winners from major events in 2019 and another player from the winning ATC team. This very well could have warped my perception of our units.
If the maleceptor iteself were hard to kill then we might be on to something. However, if a T7 12 wound monster with a 4++ save were really hard to kill, every list would still start with 3 flyrants.

However I love to hear how people play a unit/model and it often inspires me to try and run something based of the ideas I get off the hive. I want to hear the discussion. Just know that if I played the unit and it didn't work then I will also share my experience of how and why it didn't work for me. The list of models that are really good and give you a chance of winning games against any other army are really small from any codex. Most codexes have tons of options that just aren't used or considered because they are inferior choices. Some of it is group think. But group think is very valuable in 40K because of the variables that you can face. There are so many variables that there is little chance that you have faced everything you could possibly encounter and so it helps to have some knowledge of what to do should you encounter something you weren't expecting. Then there are people like Sean Nayden who plays the most funky lists you can imagine and still wins big. Most of us aren't that level of player though. No one ever was able to recapture the glory of lictor shame and many tried.

[killercroc]

Long story short; don't complain about people going hard in friendly pick-up or for fun games if you never discussed before hand you just want a light friendly game.

To a degree the game will always be competitive because it's one player vs another and each one is trying to win. Now what they define as a win depends on the player like "You scored more points but I killed more of your army" type of thing is more of a personal choice. Casualness will come from a mix of units taken and actions made during a game. If you get a vanguard vet squad with combi-meltas within 6" of a tank it doesn't matter if the game is competitive or casual that tank is getting slagged, however the actions and the way the players act to each other and the board can be different enough to be casual/competitive.

As for any units that are "casual" I think that's just code word for a bad unit. You wouldn't take a bad unit to a competitive setting because it reduces your chances of winning no matter how cool looking the model is, however in a casual setting taking less optimal units because you like them and aren't going out of your way to completely win as hard as possible does work in a way.

Most my games are semi-casual/competitive. I bring units that aren't the best but I like them, try combos out I'm not sure will work, all while having drinks and snacks joking with friends but I'm still going to try an win the match.

[infornography]

I do think a lot of people (myself included) have inadvertently implied a hard dichotomy between casual and competitive when no such dichotomy exists. Everything is a blend of the two.

In the platonic ideal of a casual game, both players would be relative newbies who don't carefully consider their moves and are taking the models that they have assembled which they picked based almost entirely on how cool they look. Both players are using the game as a structure around which to have casual conversation largely not related to the game and don't honestly care who wins or loses. It is basically like a bunch of old women getting together to play Bunco but with expensive models and a narrative behind it. I know this sort of situation exists, but it is not common and doesn't represent any significant percentage of the community. A lot of time though this idea is what is considered when discussing casual play.

In the platonic ideal of competitive, you have players who are at tourney skill levels taking lists that they spent hours agonizing over and then bought models based on the list, then revised the list because of an FAQ that hit before they were done assembling and painting, then bought the new models they needed for that list, then modified the list for a new interaction that they just learned about, then bought the new models needed for that, and then finally hit the table with a super fine tuned cutting edge cutthroat list that, while it may have a weakness here and there, is about as good for their chosen faction as it could be given the meta at their LGS. Those players then reference rules multiple times throughout the game and don't deviate in conversation much beyond what is happening on the table or trends in the hobby. Finally one comes out on top through a combination of listbuilding, tactics, and relative faction strengths/weaknesses. This similarly doesn't represent the majority of gamers in this hobby, but is probably more common than the casual ideal and is certainly a much MUCH higher percentage of common contributors on this forum.

Most games are somewhere between these two. If you are in a meta that you feel is casual but are consistently trounced and are looking into what you can do to make your list stronger, then you clearly are not in the casual ideal. If you then proceed to come to a forum to ask for tactics and advice you are taking your play to a next level closer to competitive. Something I have seen happen is that players start off pretty casual but one player has a less effective list due to what they have available, they shore up their knowledge and tactics and get more competitive. Their regular opponents start losing to them consistently so they sharpen their tools and get more competitive. One of them pulls ahead and everyone gets better so they can tackle that person. Eventually what started out as a casual meta has become a fairly hard competitive meta before anyone involved even realized it was happening.

At the end of the day the most useful advice on the forum will be from a fairly hard competitive perspective because that advice is useful regardless of your level of play, whereas advice that is only useful if you assume middling skill levels and lists then it will ONLY be useful at that specific level of play.

When I say that at casual, anything is fine, I do mean at the ideal level of casual rather than a realistic one. It is meant to demonstrate that the harder you go the more universally useful the advice gets. Yeah that means some strategies that can work at a mid tier of play is not going to be endorsed by the majority here simply because those strategies will quickly find themselves outclassed if you are in a meta arms race at your LGS. It is more efficient to focus toward strategies and lists that CAN compete at high levels so that when you eventually find yourself there, you won't have invested a ton of time and money on things that just can't hang.

[gigasnail]

Jan 2, 2020 14:55:56 GMT No One said:

Like, deliberately taking bad choices for fluff reasons, then taking other bad choices deliberately for no reason? Unlikely. But taking bad choices for fluff reasons, then not optimising the rest of the army and just taking decent stuff/good stuff that doesn't necessarily mesh? Quite likely.

my long suffering opponent? this is literally him. it's what he does. no amount of after action breakdown or list building discussion has made a dent in his throw a bunch of (please do not swear) at the wall approach. he has stuck it out long enough to see DA go from utter garbage to very good to eh and now with the new SM buffs (and them coming up next in PA) back to pretty good and only has ever won one game against me, and that was because i didn't feel like arguing that yes, i can actually count and we let the game end on 4 (i think?) and not continue to 5 where i'd have nearly tabled him.

[Rahab]

I may have not conveyed this well in earlier posts, but I have no real complaints about the state of 40K, my local meta, competitive vs casual games, or my often disproportionate loss/win ratio.

My personal wargaming mantra is the following:

1) I'd much rather lose on my own terms than win on someone else's. I won't torture myself painting models I don't like, or playing ones that don't fit the theme/story I've concocted for my army, simply because they're "good".

2) I'd rather lose a close game than win a blowout. This isn't altruism. I play to have fun, and I don't have fun if my opponent is miserable. I don't want to get steamrolled either, don't get me wrong, but I can take it better than most.

3) How I win is more important than if I win. I'm sure there is a MTG gamer archetype for this. I love feeling like I played from behind and won using "clever tactics", or, barring that, temporarily alarmed someone before my inevitable, spectacular failure.

4) Casual gaming is really effing hard to do right. As has already been noted by others, in a competitive game everyone knows where they stand: I'm loaded for bear, you're loaded for bear, 2k points, ITC missions, standardized terrain, etc., etc. With casual games, you often have no idea what kind of expectations you're walking into. You have to talk it out, you have to work together to create a mutually entertaining experience, and some times you just have to decline playing a person ever again if you know they won't meet you halfway.

5) Finally, casual and competitive aren't diametrically opposed, antagonistic views. We need each other.

Tournament play generates the data needed to help balance the game. A more balanced game is more appealing to casual gamers, who still drive sales by a large margin, according to GW's own metrics. The sales give GW incentive to keep paying attention to tournament data and game balance... And the great wheel turns.

But it's late and I'm rambling. There's some great posts here, folks. Hope to read more!

[naviedzony]

I once had an idea for a fluffy and friendly game. I tried to play a narrative campaign about Tyranids clashing with Eldar with an escalating series of battles. It would consist of series of games played with progressively increasing armies and we were to forge some narrative linking these battles in a narrative chain, but... it all went to hell pretty fast. I did not know my opponent very well at the time.

First, we clearly had a very different opinion on what is fluffy and what is simply the best units in codex. The lack of a common understanding of what is a fluffy way to play and what is a skill-based rule lawyering killed it. Then, when I tried to finally, for the first time in my life, use all those tasty stratagems like "Sporefield" and "Endless Swarm" to give my army an intimidating look of this endless horde approaching, I heard that I clearly cannot use theese, because they are overpowered and the fact that we are currently playing a narrative game, not a matched play, didn't matter at all. Then he proceeded to kill all my little hormagaunts, termagaunts, rippers and spore mines with his fluffy list, which was not overpowered at all due to the logic, that Eldar are just good in fluff, so it's what clearly should happen, right?

Yeah, we didin't play again after that one time.

On the other hand, one of the most fluffy games I had in my life was a game I played against Astra Militarum player on the most competitive tournament in Poland, when I fielded pretty standard all-rounded Tyranid force with a little GSC detachment and he fielded a lot of guardsmen and tanks. In like ten minutes we established, that the battlefield looks like the scene from the "Starship Troopers" movie and just went with this idea. In the end, I won by a small margin, but we had great fun playing the overall very balanced and close game.

So what these two stories say about fun games? I belive that what I learned from this experience is, that the fun is something that emerges in the point, where the expectations of both players meet. You can't just agree on having fun. You have to agree on so much more, so when it finally get to actually playing game nobody would be surprised with the level of competetiveness showed by both players.





And avoid "toxic fluffy guys" like a plague, I tell you. There is nothing worse, then some dude, who tells you that his army has right to be OP, because his fluff says they are.

[Rahab]

Yes, as much as competitive players have carried a stigma for negative behavior, Toxic Casuals are probably more prevalent and often worse.

Competitive players are bound by written rules at the end of the day, and so the main issues I've seen involve RAI vs RAW. This was a much bigger problem prior to GW's new focus on community engagement and semi-regular FAQs.

Casual play has to cope with the "Head Canon" most players carry regarding how the rules should best reflect the fluff they are so devoted to. If you have ever read fan-made rules or "shudder" a fan Codex, you've seen the black depths this can lead to.

[gigasnail]

yeah i generally avoid that (please do not swear) like the plague it is.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Where I live, the competitive players are the toxic ones. One guy has done the following:

1) screamed at me nonstop one game that tyranids should be nerfed into the ground when I brought a mortal wounds spam list (50 point biovores and two sporecysts)
2) demanded to be able to drop a unit in a turn 3 charge phase (as he'd let me move a unit in my psychic phase)
3) claim to know the rules the best and then deliberately misplay rules to his advantage.

I've never had issues like that with fluff oriented players.

[mattblowers]

Jan 3, 2020 13:12:04 GMT naviedzony said:

And avoid "toxic fluffy guys" like a plague, I tell you. There is nothing worse, then some dude, who tells you that his army has right to be OP, because his fluff says they are.

Every army is OP in their own codex fluff. Heck, Tyranids are eventually going to consume the entire galaxy.

[gigasnail]

Jan 6, 2020 13:03:54 GMT hivefleetkerrigan said:

Where I live, the competitive players are the toxic ones. One guy has done the following:

1) screamed at me nonstop one game that tyranids should be nerfed into the ground when I brought a mortal wounds spam list (50 point biovores and two sporecysts)
2) demanded to be able to drop a unit in a turn 3 charge phase (as he'd let me move a unit in my psychic phase)
3) claim to know the rules the best and then deliberately misplay rules to his advantage.

I've never had issues like that with fluff oriented players.

That has nothing to do with being competitive, that guy's just a douchebag.

[hivefleetkerrigan]

Jan 6, 2020 15:17:56 GMT gigasnail said:

Jan 6, 2020 13:03:54 GMT hivefleetkerrigan said:

Where I live, the competitive players are the toxic ones. One guy has done the following:

1) screamed at me nonstop one game that tyranids should be nerfed into the ground when I brought a mortal wounds spam list (50 point biovores and two sporecysts)
2) demanded to be able to drop a unit in a turn 3 charge phase (as he'd let me move a unit in my psychic phase)
3) claim to know the rules the best and then deliberately misplay rules to his advantage.

I've never had issues like that with fluff oriented players.

That has nothing to do with being competitive, that guy's just a douchebag.

Agreed he's a douchebag, but he's been my main exposure to the competitive crowd. I should note that he enjoys the fluff so maybe the issue is that on his end? Who knows.

[killercroc]

I feel like there is a bit of not realizing what the competitive is, it's the exact same game as casual 40k; same rules, same units, etc. It's the mindset and the attitudes of the players that play that playstyle, so if more douche bags are attracted to competitive play it becomes a factor of competitive play.

[Rahab]

All that said, casual can be a blast if you find the right people. There's a Tau player here that runs Viorla breachers in devilfish as his mainstay, with almost no drones. It's awesome!

Here a true scene from our Casual Club that represents why I love it.

Me: Once your berserkers move onto that objective, you've won this one, pal.

Chaos player: They're not moving onto the objective. They are disobeying my orders to go attack your hormagaunts.

Me: Wh.. Why?

Chaos player: (stares incredulously) ...They're Khorne berserkers, man. (shakes head, rolls charge dice.) Blood for the Blood God!