40K 9th ed

[Munkie]

1 hour ago, Ish said:

Too many people are looking for zebras.

Not really. I just fail to see how the convenience of the printing size is mutually exclusive with them wanting to take advantage of that.

They wouldn't have printed quick start Warcry mats either if they didn't do it for a financial reason. Plenty of standard size mats existed at the time, and GW had no presence in the area. So they created a new market. A market, conveniently enough, that was easy to create because they could print it in an economical way. 

Nobody ever told GW they had to make mats for any game system. The fact that the also have proprietary sizes for other game systems, doesn't dispute that.

Rather, it makes perfect economical sense for them to expand their unique sizes to 40k, because they can arrange all of their terrain and potentially modular products on the same scale. It doesn't make them villainous, but it does fit with their history of consolidating control of their products and related copyright concerns.

I don't personally care, I don't own a table so I'll just play on whatever the store offers. 

I'm just trying to be realistic about how companies think. They don't just start randomly making things, they do market research. I have to believe their market research was more in-depth than measuring a printer and exclaiming "Jolly good! We'll make mats!" 

It's not zebras and horses, it chicken or the egg.

[ZeroStride]

But...it's a reduction of size, not an increase. You can just put some electrical tape or something on the mats you have, or cut them down if you're feeling froggy. It's not a "throw out your mat and/or boards" you...just use the same thing and put a ruler down on one side to adjust the available space.

If any intent, beyond logistics, is there it's likely that reducing the size of the play field is both to a) have a reduced play area to go along with the increase in points costs (and therefor fewer models on the table) and b) as part of trying to make melee armies more potent.

[Ish]

It’s not a reduction in size. It’s a suggested minimum size for playing the game on. 

[ZeroStride]

Ah, yes, right. My mistake.

My point was mainly this isn't a "throw everything out to play suggested size". There's no reason at all to think that a slightly bigger play mat or table is a money grab, when you can just...use less of the thing you already have. Now you have more room for beer and rolling dice.

[Ish]

The Ordo clubhouse has (approximately) 24,601 game mats already in it’s collection. Most of the local game stores have about that many on their “community terrain” shelves. Everyone who’s built a table in their basement/garage/shed has built it to a 6’ x 4’ size.

Games Workshop could say “officially from now on all games of 40k must be played on a 7’ x 5’ table or else!” or whatever. They’d be ignored.

I see this move as more of a suggestion to totally new players. The now middle-aged dad who played 40k back in junior high and wants to do something with his 13 year old; the high school senior who decided to give the tabletop hobby a try because he liked Dawn of War; and all the other sorts of people that don’t have a custom built table of their own... It’s basically GW saying “Don’t worry, you can totally play a 1,000 Point game on your dining room table. But if you want to play 2,000 Points, you’re going to need something a bit bigger...”

[InfestedKerrigan]

2 hours ago, andy said:

It says, to me, that FLG sells playmats.

As it stands, seeing as how GW has reduced minimum play area by inches, their entire line of 40k playmats is unaffected by this. 

[InfestedKerrigan]

Here's a post from Reece about it too.
"Alright, the cat is finally out of the bag on the table size thing so we can actually speak somewhat freely about it.
So, let me address a few things to clear it up a bit as some of you are already freaking out a bit or speculating wildly about the why of things here.
First: do you have to switch your table size? No. As they say in the article, it's not required if you want to stick to a 4x6' although it is good to know that 9th was designed to be played on a smaller surface and the missions areas many of you have seen were designed with that in mind. They still function on a 6x4' for sure, but I wanted to put that out there. 

Second: why did GW do this? The answer is incredibly simple: it allows new players to build a table using Kill Team boards that easily fit into boxes. That's it. No conspiracy, a simple choice based on what they felt was best for accessibility to the game from a business perspective.
Third: did we at Frontline have any input on this choice? No. We have absolutely zero influence in or usually even knowledge of product development choices GW makes. We only give feedback on rules. We were pretty shocked when we learned about this ourselves but the choice was made and we had to keep our mouths shut due to our NDAs. It was not fun to be in our shoes but that’s the way it goes.
Fourth: will we be running our events on these new sized surfaces? Yes we will. Once I got over my shock and aversion to the idea, and I saw that it was much better for the long term logistics of event organization, I started to come around on it. You can fit a lot more people in the same space, you need less terrain and over time, it will make it a lot easier to get involved as a TO as the barrier to entry has been lowered."

[andy]

53 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

As it stands, seeing as how GW has reduced minimum play area by inches, their entire line of 40k playmats is unaffected by this. 

Both FLG and Nova have stated their tournaments will use the minimum (reduced) size. Where they lead, tournaments follow. They're gonna sell a crapload to tournaments and tournament players who want to play on the 'official' sized mat. Not saying they're evil geniuses that planned this from the beginning, just that it's... convenient for a part of their business that had previously crested the top of the sales curve.

I don't have a dog in this fight. I don't do tournaments, only playing in my basement on my 4x6 which ain't gonna change (unless there's a OFCC in '21 -- never been to one and it's right here in my back yard). I can, however, spot... conveniences.

Edited June 6, 2020 by andy
conjugation is hard

[PumpkinHead]

Holy rusted metal batman!  It is going to be interesting to see how people adapt to the new rules. If they keep the 48 in. as it is just easier and tape off a foot of the mats. Or if they will actually cut the mats down to 44". 

[InfestedKerrigan]

I have two 4x5 benches that can now host two games with side boards instead of 1 game with them pushed together. I still have 1x1 mod tiles, we will see how that goes.

[MexicanNinja]

Frontline is a joke.

[InfestedKerrigan]

Admins, @MexicanNinja's account has clearly been hacked by @Lord Hanaur for trolling.

[PumpkinHead]

FLG and it's liquidation sale of mats... Must be nice to have insider info. 

Oh well, I am hoping the games go a bit faster with less bookkeeping.

[MexicanNinja]

3 hours ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

Admins, @MexicanNinja's account has clearly been hacked by @Lord Hanaur for trolling.

I'm not a fan of frontline gaming.  That's my opinion.  I don't like their "talk show" things and i greatly dislike how they are afraid to say the hard truths about GW and 40k at times.

I don't like how they had all those great things to say about 8th, bragged about how they knew sooooo much about the game, before it was released, and then contradicted themselves through their "talk shows".

They told how great 8th was then did a 180° flip with their ITC pack. 

The best batreps and games I've watched on YouTube are without ITC.  I also enjoy non ITC 40k better;but, the majority of people play ITC because that's how events are run and if people don't get ITC points from events then it's considered "a waste of time".

I greatly miss the old tournament days!

[MexicanNinja]

4 minutes ago, PumpkinHead said:

FLG and it's liquidation sale of mats... Must be nice to have insider info. 

Oh well, I am hoping the games go a bit faster with less bookkeeping.

Im all for the change but i don't give two [big bad swear word]s about reece trying to explain why GW did this or that or how the game is better.  He did it with 8th then took a good chunk of the core rules out of the equation with the ITC pack

[Ish]

It’s been my opinion since looong before ITC became a thing that any tournament for any game that makes use of “comp systems” of any type is doing a great disservice to the hobby.

Play the game as written in the official books. No house rules.

 

[Munkie]

ITC really doesn't do much in the way of house rules--mostly just with LoS and terrain these days and that's because the 8th ed terrain rules aren't great.

I don't like ITC as the industry standard, and especially their accumulation of ITC points, and the effect that can have on players' psychology.

What I do like are their missions--at least in concept. They're a little too sanitized into tournament friendliness for me to fully embrace, but the ability to score and win in a variety of ways is a far more interesting and realistic approach than GW's "do one thing to the exclusion of all else" approach to eternal war missions.

The ability to focus on killing or board control, but never to the exclusion of the other, and the ability to change those tactics in-game if necessary just makes for a more dynamic scenario.

[ZeroStride]

Just...as a point of order, it is not at all required to follow ITC mission pack in order to accumulate ITC points. It wasn't prior to 9th, and it's still not going forward.

You could, and can, and will be able to run a 40k or Kill Team event, with core missions only, at 1000 points, refusing to use any chapter approved books even, and have it count for ITC points. You can run Kill Team at 300 points with completely made-up missions, and it will count for ITC points. There is zero requirement to use ITC missions, or a certain points level, or anything else to count as an ITC tournament. The participants will get ITC points.

But progressing beyond that...

...this year I flew to Vegas, went to the FLG office (after I helped set up streaming gear) and helped friends who were the TOs for Kill Team at LVO paint, assemble, and transport the terrain needed for the Kill Team tournament. FLG messed up our terrain support, big time, (and that was unintentionally-[big bad swear word]ty on their part) that's why we had to drive back to Vegas at 2am, 4 people in a Prius + 5 big bins of terrain in the trunk and on our laps, with all the windows down to prevent being overcome by fumes from the spray paint, the night before LVO started. I built so many ork towers. I have the pictures. It was cold as [big bad swear word]. We were tired. Our fingers, and cloths, had superglue caked on them.

It's just...this isn't some grand scheme for money. You know what TOs across the world are going to do with their existing 6x4 mats? It's going to be 3 or 4 crazy sumbitches cutting/taping mats at midnight, before the tournament, trying to sort out how to make it all fit onto tables. They'll wake up and be at the event before it opens. They'll somehow sort it out. That's how the sausage is made.

So I'm just gonna let this go, after this, but...I just wanted to say my peace on what exactly goes on when you're trying to do organized play; what actually happens trying to put on an event. It's bonkers. It's absurd. It's logistics of an MDF production line. It's the event-coordinators at the property saying, "Wait what?" It's really tired people who got promised one thing, then (for no reason rooted in malice or duplicity) got handed something else a day or two before an event. The [big bad swear word] happens. But the deadline is set, and 9am looms; and it is unmerciful.

Trash talk Reece from FLG, or Mike from NOVA, whatever. I don't have a dog in this fight; but this is how the sausage is made. It's chaos. It's logistics. It's volunteers. But it's a pure flight of fantasy that it's some kind of grand scheme, because the reality is that it's madness that only barely gets pulled off on schedule, and nobody gets rich off of it.

[Ish]

10 minutes ago, ZeroStride said:

It's just...this isn't some grand scheme for money. You know what TOs across the world are going to do with their existing 6x4 mats? It's going to be 3 or 4 crazy sumbitches cutting/taping mats at midnight, before the tournament, trying to sort out how to make it all fit onto tables. They'll wake up and be at the event before it opens. They'll somehow sort it out

Or they could just leave the tables at the standard 6’ x 4’ that they already are and that we’ve all been using for 33+ gorram years.

Why does no one seem to grok the idea of a suggested minimum size!?

 

[Lord Hanaur]

21 hours ago, Ish said:

Or they could just leave the tables at the standard 6’ x 4’ that they already are and that we’ve all been using for 33+ gorram years.

Why does no one seem to grok the idea of a suggested minimum size!?

 

If only you could beleive that TO's or shop owners would go that direction.

[Lord Hanaur]

On 6/6/2020 at 5:03 PM, InfestedKerrigan said:

Admins, @MexicanNinja's account has clearly been hacked by @Lord Hanaur for trolling.

uh...lol?

 

[InfestedKerrigan]

14 hours ago, Lord Hanaur said:

uh...lol?

 

Are Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights armies?

[Inquisitor66]

2 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

Are Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights armies?

They currently are, no reason to think they won't be.

[Lord Hanaur]

9 minutes ago, InfestedKerrigan said:

Are Imperial Knights and Chaos Knights armies?

I think so.  Why would they not be?

[Lord Hanaur]

7 minutes ago, Inquisitor66 said:

They currently are, no reason to think they won't be.

Yeah.  That was a weird question.  hehehe.