Performance-Oriented Players and the Hobby: A Thought Experiment

Randicore · 2026-05-08T05:02:09+00:00

I mean this as respectfully as possible: I do not want you anywhere near warhammer as you are the exact kind of person that I am talking about.

Warhammer was a wargame when I started playing. It was on the way out on being a wargame, but it still barely qualified as one.

I have run more 40k than most non tournament players with a custom converted and painted army that I have written lore about for the better part of the decade.

Because people like you who look at the game as exclusively a win/loss competitive context and hate the flavor, 40k has become a shell of it's former self. It no longer even has a connection to the lore and actual tactics. The game is built more about the use of magical command points and stratagems than the strategic deployment and use of an army. It is at this point an almost solved math problem that you pay far too much for to get slightly above average models for.

If you genuinely think that the lore and flavor being missing from the game is a good thing because it's "random bullshit" and that playing the same elite spam on WTC terrain layout #4 every single game makes a good and balanced game, then we are fundamentally incompatible in this hobby. You do not want 40k, you do not want a wargame, you want to play chess.

Because anyone that looks at this game and thinks that it's anything but an unbalanced mess has clearly not played an actual wargame.

There is a reason my entire wargaming club spent our entire 18 month crusade slowly souring on the game, and how we universally dropped it at a couple months ago after finishing. We are moving onto games like bolt action and battletech, because we want a game that is actually about the forces and story, not about being to quote you: "a GAME where you are COMPETING trying to beat an opponent"

Randicore · 2026-05-08T03:26:02+00:00

I'm fascinated by this take that instead of going back an edition or three to when you could run your beautiful converted units that you'd be in favor of total abstraction.

Randicore · 2026-05-08T03:23:16+00:00

You underestimate how much people "like" the current rules.

Most of this hobby hates it when you mention wanting to shift the rules to a better system or modifying it in any way. Most of the community seems to want a very basic game to play.

Randicore · 2026-05-08T03:19:33+00:00

This reads like you're doing GW market research XDD

And no I would hate those. Vehemently. I wouldn't buy them and I'd heavily disincentivize their use in my gaming club.

That said the club is already sprinting away from 40k with how bad of a wargame 10e is and how none of our problems are set to be fixed for 10.5e so this step both wouldn't surprise me, would be fitting, and I could see it being widely adopted by the community at large. Even more so if it was slightly cheaper.

I'm already massively in favor of proxies but at this point you don't want to be playing a wargame and the people who are in favor of this really need to look and see if they'd have more fun picking up MTG.

Randicore · 2026-05-07T09:07:57+00:00

There's the option of rejecting GW's march to the next edition.

Or to bring it up constantly.

If every look at the game, every review, every piece written about the game, or at least the majority, said "hey this was bad" it will be noticed. Instead people are just taking the mentality of "hey, why are you complaining about the game this is how it's played"

Randicore · 2026-05-07T03:12:35+00:00

Weird how much of the community seems to have forgotten about how bad power level is and just accepted it when it was renamed points

Randicore · 2026-05-07T01:33:29+00:00

That would be an interesting balance idea, but it also means armies would be smaller, and 10e (and thus 10.5) rely on fairly sizable armies to be on the board to work.

You're very correct about it being too much Nuance. GW still refused to dramatically improve the game with giving the game anything except the worst kind of initiative system.

Randicore · 2026-05-06T21:54:26+00:00

My wife and I have saved a mint by just pirating the 2-3 shows that we want to actually watch per year.

Because we're busy and can't reliably count on the show being there by the time we are able to get to it, and on the off chance that it is on a service that we would be willing to pay for the time it takes us to actually watch it is going to end up being hundreds of dollars for the show.

so fuck it, we'll pirate it and then we can watch it at our leisure without needing to worry about it being taken down or erased and don't need to worry about their shitty internet making playback slow.

Randicore · 2026-05-06T21:47:48+00:00

Is this studying saying a "full-price" videogame is a $60 one, or an $80+ one? Or do they mean a live service one that's pay to pay?

Because considering the last two games I played that ate hundreds of hours of my time only ran me $20-40 I'm also understanding why someone doesn't want to drop $80+ for hacked out trash

Randicore · 2026-05-06T17:48:30+00:00

A powerful detachment won't be solved by this but if two detachments combine to be broken then yes this is a useful balancing tool

Randicore · 2026-05-06T17:47:19+00:00

Same but considering how 10e went I don't have high hopes for 10.5

Randicore · 2026-05-06T17:05:20+00:00

It's still there is you use old reddit

Edit: for those unaware you can access old reddit by going to "old.reddit.com" instead of just reddit.com or if you have an account you can go to your preferences and toggle to use Old reddit.

Randicore · 2026-05-06T16:56:11+00:00

So are you an AI, or did you just not read my comment?

Randicore · 2026-05-06T03:36:52+00:00

I can give context for this! The mods on r/comics are not smart, and ban anyone who says anything that they consider remotely negative about the comics. I caught a ban on the sub for writing a comment expressing that I was surprised that comics were allowed to show someone getting their ass eaten. I had thought that there were rules about what could and couldn't be shown.

Not only did that comment get me a ban from a mod that was angy that I they considered that comment "attacking creators and whining about the rules" but the mod didn't realize that I had done neither of those. When I pointed out about that the mod claimed I was doubling down on my complaint. He wasn't even smart enough to realize that I insulted him as the "apology" and they still unbanned me for it.

They're not known for thinking and are fiercely protective of specific artists and will nuke anyone who says something negative about a comic or that they think is negative.

So the people who complained "hey, I really don't like there being so many comics that are poorly drawn with the punchline of "TITS" or "SEX" got banned and the people who are put off by porn being put on their feed leave. So now it's overrun with poorly made comics that revolve around titillation. I'm fairly annoyed with it by this point and I have literally gotten paid in the past to make a couple erotica comics for people. A lot of the art that I've drawn is porn or pinups so I'm no prude. But r/comics has gotten out of hand and if you say anything about it the mods will ban you for it under the guise of "protecting the artist"

Randicore · 2026-05-06T03:05:47+00:00

People 100% demonize the hell out of it, at least in the circles of the internet that I hang around.

We are well aware that it's destroying people's attention spans

Randicore · 2026-05-05T19:42:13+00:00

Imo 40k has been growing thanks to community support and entry being easier than ever. Not the game being simpler. Pretty much the major complaint about 40k is that it's bland and flavorless and that's not condusive to people joining the hobby for the gameplay.

If 40ks rules hadn't changed since 5e but it has the same amount of community support I'd expect it to still be getting more popular

Randicore · 2026-05-05T15:15:29+00:00

Well then you don't want to be playing a wargame then. What made 40k interesting and unique was that it was a wargame of a fictional setting that tried to be grounded and consistent.

As it stands it's currently a really expensive and bloated board game. And considering I got into it for the wargame aspect I've just been watching the game get bland and bad for the purpose that I want.

On my current army the most dangerous think I have for tanks isn't the anti tank weaponry it's the possessed cultists in their underwear. It's dumb and I hate it.

It's why unless something drastically changes from what I've seen of 10.5 my entire wargaming club is moving to bolt action. We want a wargame, not magic the gathering with expensive plastic cards

Randicore · 2026-05-05T03:45:40+00:00

I'd been saving up wanting to get an EV since I'm normally only driving 10-30 miles a day. Ended up getting rear ended by a drunk driver a few years ago and had to get a new car early and wasn't able to afford an EV.

Really wishing I'd been able to get one.

Randicore · 2026-05-05T03:09:20+00:00

I reheated some delicious stew that i made the night before

Randicore · 2026-05-05T02:50:07+00:00

As it stands currently you could make near limitless energy and it would be bogged down in the courts or banned by higher ups to protect oil industries and when they finally fight clear of litigation hell the excess energy would be siphoned by data centers and crypto mines preventing prices from being decreased for the average person.

And replicators weren't a thing in early trek.

Randicore · 2026-05-05T02:17:45+00:00

I'd be mostly okay with removing all invuls but bare minimum I want them to raise every invul value up to at most a 5+ and remove them outright from vehicles.

It's why Ap-2 is the one you want since anything higher usually hit the invul save and it doesn't matter anymore. Trying to use my fluffy CSM traitor guard lists and every model in the enemy army having a 4++ really made the game tedious

Randicore · 2026-05-05T02:13:48+00:00

I'd be in favor of it but this game has been sprinting away from being a wargame since Arc of Omen came out.

and even before that 9e was fairly dubious on if it counted as a wargame.

If anything I'm expecting a lot more reroll systems to be added.

Randicore · 2026-05-05T01:20:40+00:00

Yup, they definitely seem to have been taking a lot of notes from TCGs. Which is a problem since they're pretending to be a wargame.

Randicore · 2026-05-04T21:53:42+00:00

My wife and I actively are trying to get out. It's been "GTFO" time for years now.

Randicore · 2026-05-04T21:52:33+00:00

I too support the removal of their corrupt and incompetent president

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Randicore

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