To be fair, I sigh too, but probably for different reasons. Sirlin never figured out how to be competitive without being a dick. I don't remember if it's in that one or another article where he tells a guy playing against him that he should "play to win, not to do fancy moves", which he frames as something that should have been revelatory but comes across as masturbatory instead. (Tbh, "masturbatory" would sum up a lot of his writing). But he's right that the rules stop to function correctly when people start deciding on their own what mechanics are "allowed" or that certain styles of play are "cheap" or "unfair." If it's within the bounds of the game, it's fair. That's also why I called out the use of the term "crutch" above. There's no such thing as a crutch, only some mechanics that you can exploit to greater effect than other mechanics. I don't think these things are mutually exclusive! I would rather lose a fun game that I played my heart out in than win a fun game that I wasn't taking seriously. You can still enjoy interacting with your opponent as a human, player, and friend while they crush your spirit in the game.
I'd never heard of this article and just read it now. I expected to hate it as soon as he started talking about "scrubs" which just sounds like the usual internet awfulness. But honestly, having read it, I can't find anything to disagree with other than the language. I've never understood what people mean when they refer to something (e.g. Mutts) as "cheap," but I don't play any other games except chess so I guess I just don't have the cultural background to know what "cheap" is supposed to mean. I didn't see anything there about "every match must be played to the hilt or you're dishonoring your opponent." All he seems to be saying is that there's nothing wrong with choosing to "play to the hilt" and that your opponent can't legitimately complain if you do. Am I missing something?
Sure, but... sometimes a game sucks and it's not your fault for playing well. I recall a tournament game against an opponent who is a very good player but a sore loser. He made some mistakes early on and the game went downhill for him quickly. He got really upset - muttering to himself, refusing to put down unconscious tokens because he couldn't be bothered anymore, threatening to quit the tournament in the middle, etc. I agree with you, it wasn't a fun game. But that's not because I played a solid game and took advantage of my opponent's mistakes. It was because my opponent was unhappy with his mistakes and he let it ruin his day. Point being: "lose and have fun vs. win and not have fun" is a false dichotomy. "Have fun whether you win or lose" should be the expected behaviour for every player. And nobody gets to complain if your personal approach is "have fun whether you win or lose, and play as well as you can."
“Play hard brah, it’s not an exploit if you can do it” is a terrible attitude. Leave that crap in 40K and American tax law. One of the best things about Infinity is the playerbase’s awareness of the limitations of the ruleset. N2 was completely broken at a granular rules level (timing of AROs creating infinite loops, camo being hugely swing-y, etc). But the game was still fun when one avoided the glaring shortcomings and enjoyed the balance in other parts, plus the narrative. It was playable only because of the social contract. N3 has been much better, but there are still broken bits. These have included exploitable rules problems (superjump backshot, wall-placement with CC, etc) as well as serious balance problems. And yes of course there’s a scale of creaky versus actually broken: I’m talking about the actually-broken bits here, especially those that grant no-reaction disablement at key points in the game in ways very difficult to avoid, as superjump backshot did and linked Jammers do. Exploiting these breaks the social contract to make the game fun for all parties despite its shortcomings, which are thankfully quite small now. Ironically N3’s tighter ruleset allowed the “play it hard brah, if a rules interaction exists it can’t be broken” crowd to leak in from elsewhere. They can pretend that because the rules work in general, pushing on the broken bits must be a feature rather than a bug. This is unfortunate. Fortunately -off- the internet that social contract gains the strength of people not wanting to play with you if you’re That F@€cking Guy. B2 WIP 17 Jammers that you can’t Reset against present a pretty obvious balance issue if exploited correctly, and even fellow apologists acknowledge it. [I tend to be a CB apologist because I really really like both the game and CB as a company/individuals and am happy to work around the game’s issues, and I know several others on this thread normally fall on that side as well, and the fact that we’re here highlights the problem. I work in games, people make mistakes and balance issues are a thing even with the best games.] The answer is not to pretend the problem doesn’t exist, or to exploit it and shrug (or worse, grin and gloat) while the game’s enjoyability suffers. It is, as we have always done with the broken bits, to avoid using it unless you’re playing against an incredibly skilled player or at a fully competitive event. Just like you wouldn't hit a sparring partner in the face full force “Because I can, Brah!1!1” , but you will definitely hit him hard if it’s a semi-professional match with prize money. Casual games and local tourneys with lots of newer players, just don’t do it, guys. It’s a dick move. “It is unsporting NOT to kick your opponent in the junk if they get anywhere near you even in a sparring session” is some bullcrap extremism. At the Interplanetario though, or playing against someone who’s won a satellite and when you’re both explicit about playing the system’s fringes, go nuts. This particular problem with linked Jammers is extra-annoying because avoiding using them hobbles what could otherwise just be something interesting and fun, if you could Reset against them. And not being able to fully use an interesting new option because it’s clearly broken kind of sucks. Fortunately a sportsmanlike solution for friendly games is pretty obvious: Allow your opponents to declare Reset against your linked Jammer as they move in. And maybe don’t allow linkteam bonuses (or choose one of B2 or WIP+3 to not use, if totally abandoning them feels like too much). Regarding points and teams: A fireteam of cheapo light infantry is not a liability in a skirmish force with other great defensive options to nest with this way-overpowered one. You have plenty of points left to build your killer skirmish force AND an overpowered roadblock AND a pretty well-defended block of cheap orders. WB can focus on winning the game while this overpowered bit makes approaching a central objective far more difficult than it should be given the minimal points investment in a linked Jammer and 4 Zanshi.
Sort of depends what you mean by this though. I don't think it's fair to expect people not to take a legal profile, or not play it how the rules say it's played. There's difference between how you might approach that with a new player wanting to casually roll some dice over beer and pretzels with their new toys on one extreme, and playing top table last round at a satellite on the other though. Against the former you might explain exactly how to defeat it, or make choices that feel cool but not effective, while in the latter situation you might exploit it as efficiently as you possibly can. With a lot of gradations in between, and whilst being friendly in all of them. The point is it's context sensitive. It requires two people to come together to form a reasonably mutually agreeable social contract so everyone generally wins by playing the game we want people to play. Even if not everyone subscribes or abides to it all the time.
@Hachiman Taro , mostly agreed. I wouldn’t play it at all against either a new player or even in a friendly game without tailored lists knowing the opposing force ahead of time. It’s not an interesting or fun challenge if facing it without prep means you’re probably going to lose the game because dealing with it on a key objective will suck all your orders/bodies or just be intractable. If you get to tailor against it and happen to play an army with decent Veterans or lots of Irregular warbands, great, that could be pretty fun.
I think he hits on it in the introduction of "Playing to Win" but in true Sirlin fashion it's much more verbose than my summary there. I can dig up the exact article later if you want, but I think the whole book is mandatory reading for anyone who wants to take any game seriously. It's not an exploit though. When CB makes a ruling, is it wrong of us to trust they've considered all the implications it has for the game? Especially back when FAQs came out like twice per ITS season and took so long to get rulings on really basic issues. And that is completely handwaving that my "broken bits" may not be the same as yours. You have people in this thread complaining about forgoing stealth to force a Change of Facing ARO to walk into CC, which is absolutely by design (because the pieces that rely on that have basically no other effective delivery mechanisms for CC). I think the requirements to declare Reset are trash, but the fact they have never been fixed no matter how many issues get brought up around this can only be read as CB's endorsement of this as a feature and not a bug. I agree they're horribly broken, but CB very clearly chose to include them in the game after all the issues were raised when Spec-ops got jammers. This can't be taken as anything except a CB approval of this being intentional. This isn't sportsmanship, this is changing the rules. You are welcome to say you do this, but you cannot call what you are playing "Infinity," because a game is literally its rules. Don't pretend having a scrub mentality makes people more sportsmanlike. Telling your opponent to nerf his army or its mechanics just because you think it "feels bad" for you is the exact opposite of sportsmanship.
The article actually does discuss "soft bans" agreed upon by the community as a generally neutral option; banning a particularly egregious element if more play variety and interest is salvaged from otherwise uncompetitive elements with the removal of the dominant one. This is an option should Jammers get any worse. You can also help people who'd otherwise have a miserable game just by making sure they're at least aware of some of the more ridiculous rules your faction uses work- if I run up against a new player, even in a tournament, I'll tell them what TO Camo can do during deployment when using NCA. It lets people at least prepare, and saves a few trips for the poor TO confirming that you can just put a model on the board with a Missile Launcher during the enemy turn. They are admittedly N4 profiles sent backwards into N3, and CB is pretty swamped now thanks to overdoing it with Defiance, Aristeia! and Infinity all at the same time. I can't see the Reset issue remaining in N4, since the same issue breaks most SHIELD programs too and Hacking is getting a revamp. N3 looks set to end on a low note thanks to this oversight, though, which is kind of sad.
Agree it's not up to players to decide rules shouldn't be played the way they are clearly written. It is up to good people to be decent to each other though :)
Anyone had a chance to play many games with the Tian Gou yet? I've had a couple. I was only using a single one in a core link, which felt serviceable relative to the cost, but was played against very effectively by my opponent in one game and just barely managed a surprise against my opponent in another which wouldn't catch him a second time. It might become better as I try it in different scenarios or include a second one in a haris. In neither game did my opponent tailor their list to handle it, although apropos of nothing playing white banner with a veteran heavy infantry as the tip of the spear for a zanshi link is a very effective tool I had just kind of by accident in the event I played into the mirror. It's sometimes surprising how many lists have tools just incidentally to solve a jammer problem - and that's if you can't find a maneuver counterplay, which in my experience good players usually will.
Not going to selectively quote because a lot was said in a short amount of time. I'm going to reiterate that my opening paragraph had a hyperbole warning on it. I'm not saying that any particular person on this thread or any specific Sirlin article explicitly embodied the attitude I mentioned, but it's definitely an attitude I've seen in people who like to quote Sirlin. (And again, no disrespect intended to specific posters here). The last page or two of this thread has really put me in mind of old "page 5" debates on the Warmachine forums back in the day, however. It's not an environment that I particularly missed. One of my favorite things about Infinity is the interactivity between players; "it's always your turn" and all that. Most of the things I think aren't fun are things that interfere with that interactivity. Jammers are a borderline piece of equipment for me. I think they're fine on Hecklers and Zulus because the base point cost and AVA limitations keep them in check. I think they're questionable on Ghazi, because they're so cheap, durable, and capable of forcing your opponent into bad situations that they really are a no-brainer autoinclude. To me, this is a clear indicator of a balance problem. I haven't had the pleasure of playing against a Jammer in a 4+ member fireteam yet, but if it started heavily taking off in my local group, I'd probably just say "fuck it" and run my Morats all the time. The particular combination of capabilities in that fireteam just seems really un-fun to play against. The jury is still out on whether it's actively unbalancing, but a lot of that is likely to come down to what a "normal" terrain layout it for a given playgroup. I don't strictly avoid units that I think are "unfair" (my N2 tournament lists had plenty of Vector Operator HMGs and Daturazi in them), but I do get bored with list-building if I find I'm always including the same units. I'm not one of those people who carefully builds and refines a single list. I prefer to come up with an interesting theme or idea and then see if I can put together something that pushes is as far as I can. That means that a lot of my games can tend to be really lopsided in one direction or another, depending on whether whatever skew I'm playing that week happens to interact weirdly with my opponent's list or not. That being said, within the confines of a single game, I do do my best to figure out how to win. The mental challenge of unpacking the state of the board and the possible decisions is a lot of fun, and it's interesting to see how I an my opponent read the board differently. Another important part of a game for me is having a good post-game discussion with my opponent. While I can learn a lot by putting myself into different situations, I can learn even more if I talk with my opponent after and get their perspectives and viewpoints as well. And if what I learn is that the list I used was just utter misery to play against, I make a note of that for future consideration. People have also talked about teaching new players, and there are a lot of different approaches to that. Some folks really relish having no punches pulled and no holds barred, and want to learn by getting metaphorically bloody. That's fine, and I'm happy to engage that way with someone. Good post-game (and possibly pre-game) chats are a big part of that. Other people want to ease into things, and I'm also more than happy to oblige them as well. This means that I may choose to not engage with certain units or tactics until the person indicates that they're ready. Infinity has a lot of overhead, and if you just pile on things faster than a person can understand and internalize them, you're not teaching the game effectively. Again, this is very particular to individuals, and I'm not claiming to know the perfect sequence of games to optimally teach Infinity.
And this is one of the huge reasons I don't engage as often as I want to about this. There's a really important line between playing to win and being a dick, but sometimes I feel like people conflate those things so heavily that saying "I think it's a disservice to your opponent not play your best" makes some posters perceive me as the guy who screams and kicks tables. I'm definitely not, and I don't want that guy at my table or even in the same room as me. But there's also this attitude that runs like an undercurrent in the community at large sometimes that knowing the rulebook (or even how to navigate the rulebook to answer your own question) is a bad thing because they've bad experiences with worse rulesets meaning players who could debate the rules the best would get their interpretation more often. But in as tight a ruleset as N3 (even with the flaws it has), obviously the player who has the best understanding of the rules and how to exploit them wins most of the time. That's by design! "Knowing the rules and how to exploit them" is just another way of saying "mastery".
Whether you are being a dick or a clever fellow is about how you frame it. I'm of the strong opinion that Infinity has to be played with house rules and that no one plays without some. Literally. If that house rule is as simple as making doors useable, ignoring the requirements for Sixth Sense or ignoring the requirements for Reset, then so be it. It's a scale and no one is "pure".
I agree with you. I also think there's a material difference between playing a way the rules don't say where there's a good (or better consensus) argument they are meant to, and playing a way you think is better when the rules clearly mean something else. It's pretty clear in the rules how a linked Jammer works IMHO.
Yes, I think it's fairly clear, but I think it's also fair that if we ignore the 'must be attacked' requirement for Sixth Sense (which allows you to even use Sixth Sense in a functional way) then it's also fair to ignore the same requirement for Reset...
I would totally use this if my army had access to it during a tournament. During a friendly party, no, but when I play tournament, I play to win and try to make best list I can and most annoying for opponent to deal with.
For me I think it comes down to this: - If you don't enjoy using Tian Gou, don't use them. Maybe you don't find them effective, maybe you like variety and don't want to play White Banner the same way every game, or maybe you don't enjoy beating your opponent in ways he might find non-interactive. Any of those attitudes is perfectly acceptable and part of the game. Personally, I'll be mildly disappointed if my opponent deliberately chooses a less effective strategy because he thinks Tian Gou are broken. But that's fine, I don't get to decide how my opponent chooses to play. I'll enjoy the game anyway. - If you don't enjoy playing against Tian Gou, tough. You don't get to tell your opponent how to play. Shaming people for playing the game is just plain wrong, and will drive away more players than using Tian Gou ever will. As has been often pointed out, Infinity is a friendly game that relies on cooperation. Trying to ban your opponent from using Tian Gou is deeply unfriendly and uncooperative. So accept your opponent's choices, enjoy the challenges he gives you, and congratulate him if he wins. - If you really find Tian Gou too frustrating to handle, well you can always avoid tournaments. In casual games, you can ask your opponent in advance if he's willing to accept house rules. Or only play casual games with players who don't play White Banner. Or wait for N4. Or play a different game.
This, a thousand time this. "Scrub mentality"? Seriously? What a tryhard, that article. Next thing he's gonna call himself a pro-player. Fucking elitist bullshit. If this is perfectly acceptable, why in the next paragraph you tell this to the person who doesn't want to play vs White Banner always the same way and does not enjoy being beaten in ways that are non-interactive"? If you don't enjoy playing against Tian Gou, tough. You don't get to tell your opponent how to play. Shaming people for playing the game is just plain wrong, and will drive away more players than using Tian Gou ever will. I'm not shaming anyone for using them, they're not verboten. I'm saying that when a guy brings a very non-interactive OP list to a casual pickup match my reaction is "the fuck? I was supposed to have some fun tonight instead of being a punching bag and a boost to your ego. I'm wrapping my stuff up, I'd rather go and watch a movie instead". Tournament play was not the topic. Bringing this kind of frustrating non-interaction to casual pickup games was.
