No, but you see, red marines, green marines, blue marines, grey marines and greyish-blue marines all have separate books at €32.50 each, they are all clearly different armies!
I'm pretty sure more than half of 40k players main Ultramarines (just because they're in more than half of 40k big products) and the hyper-competitive people are all over "Smash Captains" in their "Imperial Soup" lists. So I guess there's one Marine unit played seriously. But it's not really the place to laugh at 40k "competitive scene".
Page 5 Rule 5: Page 5 is not an excuse to be an asshole. It's really sad that you have to write "don't be a dick" into the rules!
And this is why I personally dislike getting too competitive with anything recreational. Stuff gets needlessly angry and serious fast. T:
As a casual FG player (my tabletop experience is much more limited) I have to say two things: 1) Scrubbery is as much a source of toxicity as extreme WAAC approach is. When people prefer to get salty over your strategies instead of trying to adapt and counter, in-game issues will become community/RL issues, albeit probably briefly. 2) Without people actually trying hard to play to win and giving feedback based on that, game designers will have much harder time understanding their own game and whether the aforementioned adaptation and countering is reasonably possible. Highly competitive players are only bad for your experience when the game is bad enough to degenerate into losing its diversity and pushing its element which you though were its selling points into irrelevancy as people start doing just things that work. Which has higher chance to happen when people with highly competitive mindset don't playtest it.
Only a single +1 to give. What a shame. A good game works on any level and doesn't decompose and implode if you strain it with a competetive environment or just want to play casually and want both respective playergroups to have fun. I like that Infinity isn't an equation that can be solved by solving for x, with x being the troop that kills army Y's super troop very efficiently. Instead you need to focus on being able to do the mission.
I think people dont always make the distinction between competitive players and people that like seal clubbing. If im playing someone on their third game with icestorm + beyond icestorm, absolutely destroying them isnt the way to retain players. Or people that take A grade optimized lists vs some dudes fluff list. Now this is less of a problem in infinity, but i wouldnt play an opponent that has a different expectation of the game than i do. It will just come to negative play experience for both of us, i dont get to aptly test my list and skill and they don't get to enjoy the game. I think when people complain about "competitive players" they are really complaining about 40k ass holes, who go out taking net lists to casual pick up games vs people with a starter box and a random assortment of models.
"Smashcaptains" are 99% of the time going to be Blood Angels because of a Relic and Stratagem. 'The soup' list is: -Knight Castellan in Aux Superheavy Detachment, usually a Freeblade for the Warlord Trait. -"Loyal 32"(2x Company Commanders and 3x Infantry Squads, each with a Mortar Team) -BA Battalion consisting of Smash Captain and 3x 5 man squads of Scouts. I had a reply written for Barrogh's point, but Skoll's post came up and he makes an important distinction that I wanted to address. For myself, I have found that the two are somewhat intrinsically linked here in the US. It's the people who call themselves "comp players" who always want to do "tournament practice"(often with them never actually attending any tournaments!) that bring these crazy lists that are ridiculously optimized without telling their opponent in advance that it is what they're doing. It's a phenomenon unfortunately common to 40k, but part of it seems to be because of the constant 'reporting' of the lists themselves thanks to tournament organizers. GW has a great solution though...play Power Levels. It's like garlic or a cross to a vampire when dealing with powergamers. They foam at the mouth, hiss, whine, and then just piss off complaining about Harker. I make a point of generally having a couple of lists written that are specifically for playing with new players so that they don't feel they get trashed or the like. And I make a point of never playing anyone who wants to use ITC rules.
Like I've said, you absolutely MUST HAVE a person whose job is to try to break the game in at least one playtest group. Ideally, you should have someone like that on staff as well. And then you need to listen to them!
The fun thing about being that person is that you get to get creative with it. The thing isn't always about finding a game-breaking winning strategy, but one that is off-the-wall and may make the game collapse under its own rules. I am fiddling with a small board game of my own and I have yet to see how it can be broken, but it hasn't been really tested yet (only now I have a prototype).
I've been playing tabletop wargames for about 25 years. Toxic behavior isn't restricted to either casual or competitive play. You can walk into an LGS, livingroom, garage, and find poor behavior. You can walk into a tournament, and find poor behavior. The attitudes and perspectives about competition are just as diverse as the players who play the game. As a competitive player, I find 95% of tournament players to be gentlemanly, and an absolute pleasure to play against. One of the best reasons to go to a tournament is to play 3-5 games against folks who are committed to knowing the rules, playing the mission, and enjoying the hobby enough to allocate a day (or even a weekend) to attending. Many of my non-tournament games are spent teaching new players (an experience that's about as far from "competitive Infinity" as you can imagine.) By also attending tournaments, I get to experience the full spectrum of Infinity gaming. I think most gamers have encountered that phenomenon at some point. I played 40k for 12 years, I certainly saw it. I travel a lot for Infinity in the US, and haven't really seen that negative phenomenon recur in the North America Infinity community (I include the upstanding Canadian guys in this as well.) I see bad behavior occasionally among individual players, but not at the top echelons of play.
There certainly is something to be said about sportsmanship on a top table. When the tournament win is on the line people are a bit more prone to misremember a rule and try to gain an edge by "accident". However If you're trying to take it home you should be aware of human nature, be on top of your own game to not do that yourself and catch a potential slip of your opponent. If you're really worried just ask a judge to be present for that last crucial game, the'll proabably be happy to oblige as they get to watch an interesting game. Point being you can't really measure people on a single game in a competetive environment. People bend a bit under pressure, be aware that could happen, be prepared to catch a mistake yourself no matter on which side and no hard feelings in case it happens. It be great if I always follow my own advice. But I'm very much aware my mood can turn grating if someone is exhausting all of their options and I catch them. We all can do a bit better, perfection is impossible and we just need to keep trying to come as close as possible to make the game as pleasant as possible for everyone involved on every level.
This year's Rumble on Route 66 had a pretty good practice. They had a referee dedicated entirely to spectating the top table. In addition, for the top 20 tables, they had a referee review every table's final scores before they were submitted. This helped avoid scoring mistakes, confusion, and incorrect data points like wrong ITS Pin, misclicking their Objective Points, etc.
Did anyone told you, that you actually look almost like 25 ? (which is why this comment is so funny for me)
I've just notice this but with the Aquila FTO profile, the Aquila has gotten an option that the Hsien does not have and that is a specialist profile. It feels go to have an option that Yu Jing doesn't get. Muhahahahhaa. :P While its debatable how good it actually is, at least its something to make the Aquila stand out a bit more. Depending on the table and mission, having an HI specialist that can ignore most of the mods in the game could be really useful.