4 Flavors of 40K: A Plan for a Bright Grimdark Future
One gamer offers a plan that may just let GW create a game that CAN be all things to all people. Come take a look:
a guest editorial by BoLS Lounge Alum YorkNecromancer
“I’ve been thinking about ‘Age of Sigmar’, balance, and the constant calls for 40K to be one specific kind of game. That it has to be one kind of game, and that that’s just how it is. That the game can be perfectly balanced, perfectly competitive and perfectly able to forge a narrative, all while juggling over fifteen unique codicies and their supplemental companion books.
I’ve said it before, but I think it would be nice if there was acknowledgement that actually, what various players want are actually wildly different games. That they can, sadly, be mutually exclusive. And that in truth (whisper it) there is no one right way to play the game; there are as many right ways as there are people involved, plus a few more besides.
So what if there were four expansions for the game?
1.) Kill-Team: Designed for entry-level pick up play, this is a skirmish game for matches of 500 points, designed to be played in games lasting about 45 minutes. It’s also got dedicated levelling up/campaign rules, like Necromunda or XCOM.
2.) 40K ‘standard’: the game as it is at the moment, to be played ‘as is’.
3.) 40K Tournament: Designed to be played purely competitively. Minimal-to-no Forging The Narrative, no campaign rules in the story sense, but a dedicated rebalancing of armies, restrictions on certain units/army combos/what have you. This type of game plays more like an eSport.
4.) 40K Narrative: Closer in tone to ‘Age of Sigmar’, with full rules for a variety of campaign styles, including the frankly superb rules from the FW HH series of books (especially the ‘Victory Is Vengeance’ campaign from HH3). Rebalancing of armies to make them more ‘fluffy’; far more use of Allies/Unbound, with dedicated Warzone books. Every year, there would be a single Warzone book, with shiny new characters and miniatures who do not get rules in any of the other games; the narrative of that warzone would play out across the year, with December bringing the campaign’s end. After that, these new characters and models would be incorporated into tournament play.1, 2, and 4 would be produced much as books are presently.
3 would be a ‘living rulebook’, with adaptions and balances brought in regularly to rebalance armies as time went on. Players wouldn’t buy a book; they would buy a subscription to an app, say the price of a codex once a year. The rule changes from tournament play would be gradually rolled out over game types 1,2 and 4 as they became necessary/relevant.
All four games would be official, running parallel to each other; you would have to agree with players ahead of time what you want to play.
AdvertisementI think it could work.”
In light of all the recent GW revelations over being a miniatures company vs a games company – something like this actually makes a lot of sense. If Games Workshop can do anything well – its crank out hardcovers at a machine gun pace. So why fight the consumer – when you can go along with him and sell some extra books at the same time, drastically improving customer satisfaction at the same time – and putting their money where their mouth is about letting the players play the kind of game they want. A company that actually took the time to kick out hardcovers like Escalation and Stronghold Assault, could do a lot better (financially) by taking a tiny detour and knocking out a series of playstyle books. Just saying – what do they have to lose?
~How about you?
