Too much of a good thing? - Judging the Rule of 3

foreign [Music] ER podcast episode 75 I'm your host Brad this is my co-host Eric how's it going the celebrate 75 episodes of failure we are going to piss off half of our audience I mean I feel like that's what we do just about every week but true so I guess without any further Ado let's just jump into the topic sounds good all right so we're doing a bit of a Fight Club this week this is something I have wanted to talk about for a while but I didn't feel like it was ever the right time and since we had no better topic that we wanted to talk about this week we're doing this instead yeah I mean we could talk about the uh tyranids stuff but uh nah nah that sounds boring and uh lame yeah we're recording this last second so we actually saw the previews for once look at all those shiny new tyranids the new Gene sealers look 50 less stupid they're still stupid sort of kinda the hormagunks are beautiful oh my God they are really nice the rest of them all look really good especially like the larger yeah the double build giant thing the new lichters look sweet that kid is going to be so expensive with the amount of options in it I would understand that yeah looks cool though that's enough of uh boring tyranny stuff we've got big news actual interesting news and topics of discussion 2018 had a new rule So today we're going to be discussing rule of three and at least my opinion of wanting to lower said rule of three which may be a divisive topic so first of all let's talk about what is the rule of three why is the rule of three how is the rule of three when when was the rule of three Eric 2018 yeah so in April 2018 they added the rule three to the game this predates Us by like two years but luckily through the power of basic literacy we can find out what happened right words but I have to read all right I'll sum it up for you okay so Harry doesn't want to read these articles [Laughter] I figure I understand what's going on but uh you know to inform the audience I'll let you uh okay so to put it this way for you basically in 2018 competitive 40K players figured out what magic nerds understood in 1994 which is if you have a truly broken card or unit you should always take the maximum number of it this is why you cannot just run 40 lightning bolts and 20 mocks rubies hell yeah yeah so they had to put a limit on it because people were just taking seven Hive tyrants or other crazy stuff that was getting quoted from the time which is only really a problem with competitive if you're trying to be annoying yes it's very unlikely casuals were randomly buying seven Hive tyrants and running them yeah it wasn't very fluffy to do so so fluff nerds weren't going to do it and buying seven of the same kit is borderline mental especially for something that you are not usually going to run more than one to two of so I can can kind of understand why it took so long for that to be like uh okay let's try and rein this in but it's one of those things where when you're wondering why a specific stupid law exists in real life you need to understand that tabletop tournament Grinders have to be policed to understand the basics that they're even playing a game that should be fun for both participants and have basic human empathy for their opponent I don't know man fun zero-sum game yeah that's why certain rules need to be in place even if they seem like no-brainers that shouldn't be required yeah and a lot of other games I mean we can talk to our experiences with magic they limited it to four copies that was pretty necessary but also didn't ruin anything yeah Yu-Gi-Oh limits people to three copies they've got smaller deck sizes though blizzard has limits on whatever FC covered corner of the room they're in right now but I'm not going to go look up her Stone it's two but there's only one of the Legends yeah AOS doesn't have such a rule which is worth pointing out once again AOS players are proven to be less Psychopathic than 40K players keep on keeping on there yeah I don't think it would be unexpected for AOS to gain a role like this just because it's kind of proven itself well enough in 40K but hey if you don't need to don't worry about it yeah we we could get into why it doesn't exist in AOS and what impact it's had first not that could be a whole topic of its own but we're going to talk about it in 40K today yeah and one of the things when we look at rules like this these overarching restrictions generally there's exceptions to the rule and yeah 40K has those as well yeah so like 40K is troops or battle line now is what we're calling them and transports get to skirt the rule even in 9th Edition there was a pile of units that had exception cases in either direction for how many could be taken epic hero or named characters whatever you want to call them are limited to one obviously for lore reasons so you know it's one of those that just because a rule exists doesn't mean that there aren't ways around it for specific reasons kind of thing like you can have an exception if it is beneficial to the game in an overall and I'm sure there's going to be some small part of our audience that is made up of old nerds on the internet complaining about how back in the day they bought seven Hive tyrants thinking that was an okay idea and GW dared to punish them for being [ __ ] who can't be trusted to build a list like a normal person so there are going to be people who are naysayers of even rule of three and just let me do whatever broken [ __ ] I want which okay I guess but it's not healthy for a game if we're worried about game design and if you have a similar play group that you play with every week or month or whatever and you want to say hey guys what if we get rid a rule of three and everybody agrees whatever sure you don't have to play by comp rules but there as a guideline and a base reference points so that everybody's on the same page and it's worth noting that previously Force org charts were a thing in Old editions they were a thing once again in ninth Edition which limited you on types of units that could be brought in an overarching fashion which helped as a secondary limiter on why rule of three took so long to come into place as much as I wanted to be snarky yeah it'd limit the amount of like oh I'm just gonna have all tanks yes and with ninth Edition you had both rule of three and the force org chart which we could argue that was overturned in 10th edition due to overwhelming feedback from a survey they did more than likely it was because Games Workshop sales team got called out constantly for not understanding how to make legal 40K armies and sell discount boxes that could be played out of the box yeah I just I'm gonna move past that and not get into the rant that I always want on that one but luckily towards the end we had arc's Bowman and it opened up a bunch of things which was quite exciting and that evolved in the 10th edition's current structure which is even more freeform than arcs of omen there could be debate on whether it's too free-form and arcs of omen was better or this version is better because the difference isn't big enough and this is much simpler to explain yeah there is definitely a part of Simplicity is good as long as it's not causing issues yeah like over complications that don't really help aren't needed but there were exception cases that were made previously in eighth and 9th as well once rule of three came out for example in eighth edition demon princes heavy weapon teams all of those got unified into one data sheet to keep you from running amok by taking like 12 demon princes because I've got three of slanesh three of corn then in tenth we kind of had the opposite occur to allow flexibility in the rule of three for certain units that had old exception cases like Lehman Russ is needing to Squadron previously now it's just there's data sheets for every type of gun Lehman Russ nickname whatever you want to call them allowing you to take up to three of each type of weapon yeah and I'm not a fan of that type of solution I kind of am because of how it worked with the one data sheet one ability thing and it let them each have unique abilities to feel more different than just here's 20 Lehman Russ is on the board and I equipped them all with blank yeah it works for how 10th is set up at the moment and I'm good with it but uh and it adds a little more variety than literally just running nine demolishers every game that's true yeah anything that makes it so there's less chode cannons is better yeah and I mean we've talked about these exception kind of things and there's always going to be the potential for abuse on those types of things or not always just abuse it could just be an oversight yeah like when they try to be too nice and are punished for it by competitive people who can't keep it in their pants yeah a big one being the orc bug he's like that was supposed to just be uh fluff oh wouldn't that be cool if you could run a bunch of and then yeah well it wasn't even a Fluff thing from everything I can tell the original intent was force organ night was too restrictive and made it hard for you to run like nine buggies without being able to Squadron them right but then you got into the issue of that meant you could run nine of each buggy instead of three which was the intent yeah and so then we immediately had people going what if I just run nine of the two best buggies and now I get 18 buggies instead of six to which GW went no one could possibly be that mentally ill but competitive players proved them wrong well I mean competitive work players like come on The Arc players were already ready for that but uh so it's one of those that as much as these rules and exceptions and that kind of stuff can have good intentions there's going to be problems there's going to be iterations needed to actually smooth it out kind of thing so you can't just oh rule of three is bad because of this well it's like okay maybe that specific thing is a problem but there can be changes to it so now we get into the debate the we've set up why it exists and what it is here's my thing I would prefer we lower it to rule of two okay but we can get into the hole can we lower it should we lower it why why not is three two restrictive should we go up to four right is three the right number yeah and I think we can knock the obvious one out of the way first three is not too restrictive if anything if you get into some math stuff it's probably not restrictive enough so I agree with you but a large part of how these restrict restrictions will play out is how each unit composition is set up if they keep Squad sizes large then we don't have to worry about having more squads but if they shrink them down then it'll be like okay you can only have five in the squad but we only get two of them yeah but that's very rare for you to get limited to five per squad for any unit like even custodies go above five per Squad I agree at the moment but you know it's one of those that like forward thinking you want people to still be able to play their stuff yeah maybe you don't need three copies of the exact same build of the exact same tank in your list or a wraith Knight yeah but at the same time you don't want to be restricting people's Collections and destroying orc boys which is why exceptions exist already yeah exactly and as you brought up there are ways like Louie and Ross which I'm not a huge fan of that solution but it exists and there's ways that you can do that for others yes if they wanted you to run more heavy weapon teams they could just put them out again so you can't run as many of the most efficient one but you are allowed to run a thematic list with a lot of them still yeah and then you know it's just one of those that like as we're talking about rule of three or potentially rule two keeping in mind that there is another major knob that can be turned and tweaked which is the composition of each unit yeah in this discussion no matter which solution we talk about you have to assume there's going to be a big refactoring at the same time in other ways to compensate for it yeah knowing GW six months later when they realized they should have done it right for rule of two certain things they want more than two of may need to be able to be squadroned other things like heavy tanks probably not so much right certain data sheets getting split might be good so that you can't run three of the exact same build of the exact same wraith night but maybe you could run three wraith nights as long as they're not all the same disgusting build right yeah you could do something like the Lehman Ross or dare I say some of the Forge World option things that they've done it's not open that can of worms and I mean you can also increase the size of some of the ones like yeah orc boys are battleline but you know if looking at those types of units we could just increase it to like okay yeah you could have 30. sure there's ways to tune it but for another thing you've got the idea that battleline is not locked you can have a Detachment that alters what your battle lines are if you want an iron hands feeling Space Marine list to exist that can run way too many copies of Tanks you could make the Tank's battle line in that one yeah so which honestly that sounds really cool yeah but then you're not you're not getting you know three copies of a redemptor dread in addition to those tanks exactly we could get into the whole argument for like where the lines would be where the exceptions would be that would take 16 hours and gets into actual will work where you're sitting there trying to math out from a game design standpoint what is healthiest what the community would want what about this group are they enough of a issue to think about where we want to help them out too deep yeah and then there's like the oh we also have to take into account how that works in the overall meta of everything else and then yeah that's like actual real game design thoughts and uh a bit too deep it is worth noting rule of two already existed in ninth Edition when you played an incursion game which is a thousand point game rule 3 was replaced by rule of two in 10th edition you can run three copies of something in a 1K game until the FAQ that later and it gets into the Simplicity thing of is it worth it to have different limits at different point amounts yeah yeah we could get into the whole debate but whatever it's fine so I guess let's talk about why rule of two is something I want and problems that we have to think about okay so to begin with rule of two I think exemplifies what a list should ideally look like from a balanced looking Army standpoint from GW standpoint yes I agree with what you're saying but I'm not sure I would say it is like a balance I would say more of like a uh no balance isn't balanced um looks of a list not balanced as in 50 50 win rate yeah more of a healthy Army diversity so like each Army has potential options of you know they've got some ground troops they've got some heavy support they've got some fast you know like a war game Army that's tactical and has options right like instead of it being oh I've got none of those other things and just a bunch of Tanks yeah and this gets into one of the reasons I think rule three was the original deciding number I'm going to guess that they did some basic research before they randomly stapled on a solution I know this is a stretch for GW but I'm going to give them this much benefit of the doubt and I'm going to bet they found a large chunk of people at least at unit sizes at the time whatever owned three copies of things too regularly yeah where it would cause issues if you went to rule of two and it would have caused too much negativity about the change whereas most people would accept three and it was rare for them to own four of something unless again they're in a super minority of having like an obscure fetish for a certain Dreadnought and I think that's a reasonable expectation I mean rarely do people buy more than three of any of the box sets kind of thing yeah or at least more than what would become three max size units you might end up owning like 18 score packs which is more than three boxes but is three units yeah but I think it would be a fair estimate with some just basic market research to either prove or disprove that and I mean it makes sense but at the same time from an enjoy standpoint as an opponent or a third party watching a game yeah slant lists are just objectively less enjoyed when you look at pure numbers of who wants to watch What on YouTube or twitch or whatever especially the second and third time yeah there's a reason balanced armies tend to be the ones that people are playing when you're watching battle reports yeah it's just a more natural good looking game to watch and as an opponent it's nice to not play against an incredibly slanted list that's going to start causing issues in your list building this is why Knights also ends up famously hated by a lot of people because they don't like the binary do you know how to destroy Knights or not right those slant lists can be fun the first time maybe the second time if it's a really weird one and like you know they didn't really know how to play it so they needed the you know okay let's I figured it out let's actually try it for realsies this time but after that it's just like no yeah and we're equally as guilty like when you think of our game games we've had plenty of slant lists where I take like what is the extreme like super wraith heavy necron list stuff like that and I'll play that but then I'm never playing that list a second time that was neat but let's not again yeah it's something people will tend to play you know one or two games to try it out go that was fun and weird back to something more normal or a different weird thing and when balancing rules of a overarching thing there is some like okay let's make sure that players that go to a tournament or the players that are playing two or three games every couple weeks aren't gonna be bored after playing the fourth game or the sixth game against the same slant list that's like yup cool wow three wraith nights I can't believe you got so bold and brave here yeah now this gets into a good segue into my next point which is game balance which is actually talking about win rates and health of affection internally that type of stuff rule of three at times is far too liberal and has caused issues where it hides how unhealthy the internal balance of a faction is by propping up win rates which is what they tend to look at for if an army needs help how healthy do gray Knights feel last Edition Eric especially early edition when you had like a 60 win rate or a 56 win rate [ __ ] awful yeah but you couldn't tell that because you were allowed to run three dreadnites two name dread Knights and 30 interceptors and it was very much a slant it was like it was fun the first time and it was like it was kind of stuff on the second time but like [ __ ] off I'm done I want to play the paladins I want to play something else I want to do something else I want to have a more normal War gaming army yes but the problem is when you can fill your entire list by taking three copies of a couple units and then have those units hide how bad your faction is in total because it only takes you know a single busted unit to be half your list especially when you're like the different between it being too strong and fine could be just 20 points 30 points for the model and it's like yeah that's propping up the rest of the army that's why it's doing okay but no it shouldn't be and if we weren't able to bring so many of the same thing it would be more obvious you could see like oh yeah when those two units die the Army kind of falls apart yeah let's look at how many gray nights let's win without at least three dread Knights and at least 20 interceptors wow zero of them got above a 2-3 maybe the internal balance of this faction is totally screwed up and needs to be fixed yeah it's something that rule of three works as a Band-Aid over that I don't like because it's caused less care to be taken because well as long as you've got two or three busted units you'll be able to get your 50 win rate as an army and then we can ignore you it's hiding internal balance issues too much and at the same time two of each thing is going to be slightly restrictive on some lists and some potential ideas but it's unlikely to be so restrictive that you can't have the game plan that you wanted to actually put together in a list and I think that one of the the concerns is in Arc development Orcs was in just an awesome spot we had so many options for lists that we could do whatever we wanted it's true Force org really did all of the orc identity slant lists because you tended to be in I'm a fast attack army or I'm a heavy support army or you know I'm an elite Army and it meant the force org chart really punished your flavorful list that still had variety right and Rule of three was enough to bandage you there where you didn't need the four sword chart in addition exactly and I do have some concerns of rule of two being potentially problematic but since we don't have the force org in addition to it that would be too much absolutely yeah like it's one of those that like because we don't have force or I could see it being okay for most things because yeah you're not stuck in you know you have to have this many heavy supports and this you know it's like oh you're just just two two of them that's it you can figure out the rest of it go for it have fun and that does lead us into the elephant in the room since you hinted at it we've been ignoring the real problem children the [ __ ] armies that don't have enough options that shouldn't be armies yet they needed more given to them yeah world leaders harlequins who I guess are being unbirthed right now he has like harlequins are they're being solved Brad it's not an acceptable answer the acceptable answer is to finish the Army not to squat them no they're being uh undone and solved yeah Photon Gene Steelers although Gene Steelers focuses so much on stuff that's already battle line currently that it kind of hides what the issue would be if you were trying for other stuff and I think that that's another issue of like we still have even with the rule of two there are some armies like Gene Steelers that like yeah they're following rules right now but that's just because of battle line oh yeah that's the rack incident the famous lvo one of what if you just take 120 racks no one's going to do that well that guy just did yeah and it's like oh technically you could still do a crazy number of racks or whatever your broken troop is because it is Battle line right that's where we have to get into would battleline have to be altered in some way it's already in an okay state right now especially because they capped out units much lower than they used to especially problem units that got flagged as like you should not be able to take 120 racks and I think battle line or whatever that would be and any of the exceptions to the rule of two are the prime examples that the unit composition how many of the troops are actually in that unit can be solved like you know that's that's the knob that you tweak to solve problems of 120 racks or whatever it is instead of you can only have three of them in battle line for this battle line or something weird like that so rule of two versus rule of three as much as I think rule of two would be something that I think could be a positive if we handle it well we Squadron certain things that need to be squadroned or up their unit size however that works give a couple extra options that are separate data sheets for ones that you want to have distinct differences for yes more situational battle line you do the correct compensations that you don't end up in certain cases where armies are invalidated yeah I think rule of two could be a benefit there with that out of the way let's talk about the extreme and the fun involved in that although I am not recommending this as a global thing Singleton rule of one Singleton the name of our company is solely Singleton our 40K audience probably doesn't even understand what that means Singleton is a thing for magic also called Highlander which means you are only allowed one copy of a card yeah in 40K this would mean you cannot run two redemptor dreads you're stuck to one you could still make a dread oriented list because there's like 45 dreadnoughts but that gets into the fun of Highlander if your army is set up for it I don't even think it's worth really examining too much further for 40K just because it would force everything to be Lehman Ross style of okay technically we've got three different sheets for every option that's [ __ ] it's like [ __ ] off the real answer Eric is it would force GW to give equal attention to each faction in the game and actually put money into manufacturing for each faction and put design time into each faction so that you have as many units available to give the variety you want to everybody at an equal pace and not the 45th [ __ ] Space Marine unit this year that's the problem yeah and it's not a universal thing in Magic either it is for game mode and it would be for like a fun 40K offshoot game where you're like hey we found a really fun format to play at a tournament this week where you're only allowed one of each unit in your army with battle line being allowed two or whatever or three and I think that it could be a fun little maybe we'll play some matches like that of yeah I ran some tests just to see how doable it was at the end of ninth Edition because I kind of want to do a show on it and the answer is on a technical level you could actually get away with it in most armies if you were like this is literally all this Army could run to be legal in that format yeah so long as we're ignoring some of the problem children that just don't have enough I think it could be doable but it wouldn't be as fun you'd be limited just because that restriction is too far you've removed too much list building options that has to be the fun is that it is its own format right that is an agreement that your play group would get together and say hey we want to play a game game with this restriction just to see can we make an interesting game out of this just a bit of spice for the holidays or something it is done voluntarily I'm not recommending Highlander by any means as a universal thing I do think it's a fun thing in Magic I think it has problems in 40K depending on which army you play it's obviously much easier for people who are overloved like Space Marines rather than people who are long forgotten five minutes after they get shot into existence [Laughter] uh yeah so while I think rule of one could be a fun little thing uh no for General but rule of two could be an interesting idea I do think it's still flawed with the current setup of 40K what exists and all that I don't think you could just willy-nilly enact rule of two right now and not have it be a terrible terrible idea it would have to come at like an addition change where everything is designed for it most exception cases would be covered so that you know 90 of people would still be fine with it like oh you still have access to these units that will be able to go up to you know four or whatever because their battle line or six because they're battling oh current effects can be taken in squads of three instead of two so you didn't actually lose any carnifexes because they're not a problem child yet well yeah and I mean that's the kind of the thing is anytime that a major change like this would happen there'd be iterations to fix a lot of the problem problems but overall I think I'm happy with rule of three I don't have a too much of an issue with the rule of three but I do think at certain points when I look at either competitive army makeup or my own need to min max I find rule of three makes things too simplistic too easy yeah cause you're just like I want that and I need to fulfill a job in the Army anti-tank or something like that and it's like I'll take three of the best ones yep I'll take nine Zone throw ups done that part of the army solved let's move on to the anti-infantry or the chaff killers and we'll take three of those foreign I get it yeah but it's tough because when it comes to 40K and I mean Warhammer in general there's a more of an inherent rule of don't be a dick there's a social contract like in EDH or yeah Commander now and so like when players don't follow that which is essentially not a problem outside of competitive play or a really thick-headed friend yeah and it's like there's always going to be potential problems and like yeah it's good to keep everybody on the same game plan and like hey here's the rules let's try and follow them but there is also the hey let's not make things too restrictive too annoying and limit creativity because of that thick-headed friend true and that's where maybe it's a match play only thing yeah though then you get into problems because a very large chunk of people play match play even from a non-competitive tournament yeah because to be honest narrative play has zero balance to it open in place shouldn't exist yeah the Matched play is the standard game right it is like any named format in Magic the Gathering yeah it's like this is what you're playing if you want to do anything else then you're just playing what we would call kitchen table magic of just like you make your own rules technically it's open Play narrative play would actually be more like EDH but that gets an old thing yeah yeah but that's where we get into there isn't a right answer in this debate it is a flawed idea that I think has Merit and should be looked into I don't think it's a solution that I would snap my fingers and make at this moment but it's something that I have yearned for at multiple occasions it's become more common for me within 10th edition where I find it is too easy to Simply slap the same button three times in list building and be done with it yeah I've done similar and I have actively looked at that and gone no not gonna take three of that one I'm gonna do something else let's only run two of them yeah yeah I'm with you and that gets into a whole reason why it match magic EDH Commander whatever you want to call it is so popular is because variety is the spice of life people enjoy the randomness of I have so many unique things my opponent has so many unique things we are not playing Horus heresy where we all have a hundred of the exact same model with a different gun and yeah a lot of games in 40K are different even if it's Shameless against Shameless because of especially now with the different missions and the objectives and stuff like that but even then which is the best part of 10th but that's a different episode oh my god I've been loving missions we're absolutely going to be doing an episode on that but even then it's one of those like it is nice to have the I haven't really had the match-up of my units against those units kind of thing like this is new that's interesting I wonder what's gonna happen and just those Unique Kind of interactions are fun so I think we're fine with rule of three for now rule of two is interesting and not immediately dumb it's not needed at the moment but it is more needed than it has been in the past yeah and I would rather have rule of two than the force org that's a very fair I am a hundred percent between those two options arcs of omen is as limited as I ever want Force org to be same I think I'm 50 50 in arks of Oman verse 10th I have no emotional ties to either one over the other I do think that from a fun list building standpoint in a narrative way tenth works better from a competitive minded player standpoint arcs of omen probably works better but they are close enough that I don't have too much issue yeah so let's not go rule of two Force org or let's not go rule three with this new Force org that's uh you know like back to ninth the original like yeah the 45 different setups and they cost different CP amounts and certain ones can be refunded once but then oh [ __ ] no it's complicated for no benefit yes and in fact oftentimes it's worse in my opinion so yeah I think we're in a good spot but it is interesting to bring up these ideas and like talk about like okay what what potentials are there and I still think at some point we'll probably do an episode when I break down and come up with a bunch of fun Highlander lists and try to sell it as a fun format to try out with your friends almost did it a few months ago we've got to do a bit of our own play testing on that one though yeah there's play testing involved in a much more exciting thing too but that one's a secret ooh I have been working on something in the background that I am almost ready to unveil to our audience and make them love a format yeah teasers I like it but I think uh with that little nugget of teas let's get out of here yeah so uh if you want to help us out please do the YouTube pleasantries we are really close to hitting 40K right now which is the ultimate meme number I really want to hit when we do that we're probably going to drag our editor on for a big meta episode where we talk about whatever people want us to talk about for questions the audience has or whatever that is probably coming in the next few weeks here as long as you know you don't all randomly unsubscribe that would suck that would suck but uh other than that your ideas on rule of two versus rule of three versus four or one or let's go back to force org and uh let's make it really tough yeah let's let's be careful about the force org here or just remove it all and just free open Play Let's have seven Hive tyrants yeah whatever your opinions are on that feel free to share them always interesting to see what people come up with if they've got a cool big brain idea I didn't think of I mean your opinion's not wrong but it's probably wrong so that's okay yeah so without that out of the way though let's get out of here for the week sounds good [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Poorhammer

Views: 42,516

Keywords: Warhammer, 40K, space marines, necrons, tyranids, thousand sons, genestealer cults, custodes

Id: cGlkO5aR-O0

Length: 35min 39sec (2139 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 19 2023