Warhammer 40k is NOT for Casual Players

welcome to goobertown Hobbies my name is Brent I have a story for you today so about a year and a half ago my friends and I decided to run an escalation league for Warhammer 40K and I thought this would be a great topic for a video so I filmed all of my painting I filmed the games I wrote a script I recorded a voiceover I edited the dang thing and then I never released it this video did not appear on my channel now the reason for this is because the video was kind of grumpy kind of bitter you know it started out like a normal video and then as it went along I just got more and more sour and I decided I didn't want to put that kind of energy out into the world so I sat on it and that video has never been seen by anyone other than me until now so I've been looking back at the video and I think it's pretty funny and I want people to see it now so to be clear before we go any further I love hanging out with my friends I enjoyed the actual game days but the worst part of the game days for me was the actual game and I want to talk about that you know I think this uh escalation league is a good introduction into the topic of different types of Gamers different types of players and why we like some games but don't like others so we are going to get deep into that but first let's open up the the goobertown Vault and let's play that previously unseen video uh roll tape welcome to goobertown Hobbies my name is Brent today we're painting Minis and playing games an escalation league is supposed to be a good way to learn a game and get an army ready for the table it's a series where you start with a small force and you gradually build to larger and larger games until you have a full Army in this video I'm going to escalate my dark lar and show you the highlights for the first couple of games my friends have cycled back into Warhammer 40K and they invited me to join in and give it another shot it's been a few years since we've played so that means that all the rules are completely different and we each had to spend $100 on new rule books now we'll see if that makes the game more fun or less fun my pals have some minis to paint that they acquired during covid times and I've got my own pile of shame that goes much farther back what we have here is a chance to make a dent in my collection of unpainted and half painted minis so here's my pile well some of it I acquired this in various eBay and Craigslist deals about 5 years ago since then I've done some basing and priming and I've tested out some color schemes but that's about it there is a lot of potential in here a lot of Unfinished Business my friends wanted to start with a relatively small 500 point game so let's pick a 500 Point list and pick a paint Scheme I'm of two minds on the paint scheme for my old third edition dark elar I colorcoded the squads red Squad advances yellow Squad fires green squad charges there's a certain joy to this I was tempted to color code my new duari Army but I ended up going with something fresh bone armor one of the minor color schemes from the seventh edition codex is this right here that armor looks nice and I'd love to find my own variant of this I did some test models and I experimented with a desert theme I found this terracotta primer from steinel resz and it all snapped into place I like this combo I'm using the skeleton bone Triad from army painters Airline as the main color I'm using terracotta for the bases and we'll figure out the rest as we go now it's time to make a list the good book tells me that the core to any dark lar Army is an archon as the HQ and two units of Warriors after crunching the numbers on battles scribe I came up with a list of two archons and three squads of 10 calite Warriors so let's consult the pile and find 32 minis to match our list some of these were built by past me and some of these were built by other people I was the one who glued the sand to the bases I magnetized all the bases too and that's going to come in handy the various colors on these models are either from me playing around with washes or me playing around with my airbrush I could have stripped all the paint off of these and started from bare plastic but I decided that I just paint over what was there a lot of these are missing heads I went through a phase where I was intrigued by the idea of subassemblies so all of those missing heads are pinned to corks and ready to paint up separately so here we are three squads of 10 and two more Warriors that I built as archons this is the current AR model from Games Workshop I don't want two of this guy in my Army I don't even want one of this guy in my Army now let's get him primed I know some viewers get distressed when I pull out the airbrush but I promise I'm just using this to base coat faster than I could with a regular paint brush no fancy Fades or anything like that not this time I'm just putting paint down fast I primed with terracotta then I put down a few layers of skeleton bone for the main color on the armor I was able to get the bases looking pretty good with the airbrush I reestablished the terracotta color on the sand and then I pulled out some black paint to trace around the rims on the bases so here we are after the airbrush a nice smooth coat of bone and we've got a nice start on the base now it's down to good old-fashioned batch painting and of course I'm on a timer this isn't a silly YouTube challenge timer though the game is on Saturday and it's already Wednesday that's a social timer my friend are counting on me and I can't let them down I won't let them down we've got to move fast we've got to get these ready for the table I think this rush to get minis painted is a common experience and this is one of the advantages of an escalation League I'd much rather be rushing to paint 500 points of minis than rushing to paint 2,000 points working to a deadline does add a bit of stress but it's also useful for actually getting stuff done as I was sitting there trying to get my small army painted my phone kept buzzing as my friends were showing off their finished units I got to keep painting I can't let my friends down the upcoming game got me to put in a lot of hours staying up late and waking up early I base coated their spandex under arour a dark brown their guns and their pouches are black later on I'll dry brush those guns with a bit of metallic paint and of course their butt towels their butt towels are incubi Darkness eventually I'll highlight those with with calite and cite green I gave them all a wash of army painter strong tone for shading and then all of a sudden it was game day I didn't have time to highlight the armor or add any detail work and what's worse I didn't even have time to paint their heads I failed to finish my Army there's only one way to atone for this shame I knew what I had to do I'm going to show you something I've never showed you before something I've never shown anyone before this is my super secret stack stash of third edition dark lar Warriors this stuff is like gold around here The Honorable thing to do in this situation is to Blue tack on some joke heads and embrace the shame of not being quite ready for the game these heads are ridiculous so I figure they'll motivate me to finish up these Warriors after the game here's my team time's up so let's go to my friend's house and play a game the magnets will hold everybody nice and secure in the steel cake pan of Transportation the last thing I did before heading out the door was try to refresh myself on the rules uh this did not go well this was actually way more stressful than rushing to get things painted the game changes more often than I actually play it and this is the part of the hobby that I'm the least interested in my friends are better than I am at reading the rules so as always I'm going to rely on them to keep things moving along thanks friends for these smaller games were playing teams of 2v2 Angie brought her Harley quins Jim brought adeptus mechanicus and Alex brought Orcs all of their armies looked great and I was glad to see that I wasn't the only one who hadn't quite finished painting perhaps we should have started with a smaller game or given ourselves a bit more lead time for painting whatever it's time to play we've got a game mat some nice terrain and some objective markers I got paired with Angie's harlequins and we went up against the Orcs And The admech no Space Marines in sight Angie and I got lucky and we got to go first I had two of my units camp on the objectives near our deployment Zone and then we made a rush for the objective in the center of the board I don't know the ins and outs of 40K in general I know that holding objectives is good dark lances shoot at vehicles and Splinter rifles shoot at troops oh and command points are used for rolls with the big guns that's what I do with command points at the top of turn one we shot the truck out from under some orc Lads and that was about it the Orcs And The admech retaliated and made quick work out of the kabalites and the archons in the center of the board the good news is that some of the harleyquin survived for the next two turns there was a big scrum between the Orcs And The harlequins Fighting For That central objective a lot of stuff died right there in the middle I learned that the orc boss on wartrike is very killy and that clown elves are even more Killy some of the admech joined in too and it was Bloody all around a bunch of the admech and the remains of the dark elar camped on the easy objectives and took pot shots at each other by the end of turn three the Orcs the Dark Elves and the clown elves were all pretty much dead good game good game and thus concluded my first game of ninth Edition 40K the adeptus mechanicus were victorious that's fine there's nothing wrong with L into an awesome looking Army my duari had stupid heads and they deserved what they got if you've watched this channel before you may know that I enjoy painting Warhammer models more than I enjoy playing the game for me the game is an excuse to hang out with friends and a justification for collecting and painting all the minis the rules for Army building are a framework for organizing minis into a force that'll look cool once it's painted part of why I'm doing this escalation league is to get a bit of experience with ninth 40K to see if I can have some fun with it the rules for the actual game seem cumbersome and slow and miserable but I'm going to try to keep giving it a chance well the first game is in the books and now it's time to escalate the escalation League we decided that for the next game we would each bring 750 points I'm already a bit behind I've got to finish my first 500 points and try to get another 250 ready to go first I put some work in on the bone armor of the unfinished Warriors I had left off after a brown wash so I reestablished the midtone with skeleton bone then I mixed in a lighter color to add some highlights one of the things that I love about these models is that they have sharp creases and edges painting all of this bone armor takes a while but it's the sort of thing that I find nice and relaxing and when it's done I think it looks pretty cool okay the next game is coming up I need another 200 50 points I decided to use those points to bulk out my three infantry squads 10 more Warriors in each Squad will give him some more survivability and give me more total shots with dark lances this is a dark Lance it's been my favorite part of Warhammer 40K since Third Edition a heavy weapon that blows up Vehicles nice my tactics generally just revolve around making good use of these things okay I had to dig deeper into my pile of Shame for 30 more Warriors I took about 12 of my old test models and stripped off all the paint this is a beefy ultrasonic cleaner that I'm filling up with LA's totally awesome this is household cleaning detergent it's a decreaser that's readily available at Dollar stores in America and it works well on paint 30 minutes of ultrasonic vibration in the Degreaser helps to loosen up the binder in the paint and a few minutes with a toothbrush reveals a whole lot of bare plastic some bits of paint are more resilient when one solvent fails I use another I'm going to put these in a jar with isopropyl alcohol after an overnight soak the bulk of the remaining paint has fallen off here we go 12 more Warriors ready to be painted after some more looking I was able to scr up enough bits and pre-built Warriors to fill the draft of 30 new recruits the three big squads are going to look something like this it might not look like much now but I'm hoping that it'll be impressive when they're done the newest most recruits need to be based I like to start by super gluing one or two larger Pebbles onto the base then I use an old brush to add a generous coat of Elmer's PVA glue next I dunk the base in a pot of sand from the beach I flick off the Stray grains and I let things dry overnight the PVA glue does a surprisingly good job of holding the sand in place a coat of primer over the top will make it even more secure back to the airbrush by now I've gotten comfortable with the routine again on this project everything can be done with a brush but the airbrush does speed things along which is good because I've got a lot of models to paint and I don't want to disappoint my friends not again my friends are painting their armies their models are looking great and they deserve to play against some wellp painted duwari step one coat everything in terracotta primer step two two Thin coats of bone to get smooth all over coverage whites and off-whites can be tricky if I wasn't using an airbrush I would probably spray Prime the whole army with skeleton bone from a rattle can step three freshen up the Terracotta on the base any overspray onto the ankles will either be fixed by me with a paintbrush or it'll just look like they got dirty and dusty from running around in the desert step four is actually my favorite this is the fastest way I know to get a smooth coat of black paint around the rims of the bases this is surprisingly easy but it still makes me feel like a marksman the airbrush can be such a fun tool once you've got it figured out an hour or two with an airbrush is giving us a massive head start with these reinforcements okay airbrushing is complete it's time to go back upstairs here are the 60 Warriors again I've made a decision I just can't help myself I'm going to color code the three squads the butt towels are a good place to put an accent color to differentiate them green towels blue towels and purple towels should all look pretty cool and if I change my mind it'll be relatively easy to modify the squad colors later on batch painting again some people hate this but I love it turn off the brain and smoosh that paint around this is the best part of the hobby right here moving stuff from the inbox to the outbox getting stuff done oh yeah look at this Harvest that's a good feeling right there new recruits with colorcoded butt towels the heart swells with pride oh my but how time does fly game two is tomorrow let's get some heads ready and glue them on I've got a whole pile of heads and helmets pinned to corks I'm working as fast as I can to make them look decent the helmets get bright be eyes shining out of the darkness and the helmet LTS get a flesh color and a wash then I'm gluing them all onto the bodies this Army still isn't finished but these 60 Warriors look better than the 30 Warriors I took to game one the escalation continues time for game two I've read a bit more of my codecs now and I'm aware of a few of the special rules for my Army I sort of understand when I'm supposed to roll some ones or do some additional bookkeeping when I roll a six close enough for game two I got teamed with Alex and his orc Lads will be fighting against Mark and his lar and Jim and his admech this is my favorite part of game day right here seeing my pals and seeing what they've brought for models I feel blessed to be in a situation where my Army is the ugliest one on the table Alex understands that orange is the best accent color for the lads Jim has this awesome shade of battered industrial yellow for his admech and the bases are perfect and Mark has these delightful yellow lar with bright blue flames I've been jealous of these for years for me deploying the units is the the best part of the actual game let's take a look at the Codex for a moment look at how cool these deployments are Dark Eldar are rushing out to meet the enemy and do some fling here's our game board my Dark Eldar are Towing the deployment line ready to run out grab some objectives and meet the enemy headon some of the Orcs are on the line and some are taking cover in the rubble our opponents Jim and Mark are lovely fellows but they are cowards they deployed all of their units behind coward Rock 1 coward Rock 2 and coward Rock 3 I understand why they deployed like cowards Alpha strikes are known to be a major problem with the whole design of this game I too could pile my Dark Eldar behind a building for a fun and immersive tabletop experience that looks really cool but I didn't turn one Mark and Jim went first I lost 49 of my 60 Warriors during their first shooting phase by the time I got to do anything this game I only had 13 models left 11 Warriors and two archons 13 models remaining out of 62 before I got to do anything I should have spent more time painting those 13 and less time painting the other 49 also I guess I should have either won the initiative role or deployed my troops like a coward myself I know what you're probably thinking if so many dark lar died that probably means there are a lot of Orcs left on the table ready to avenge them right wrong the docka jet was dead during that first shooting phase so were most of the war bikes and all of the orc Commandos and they started the game behind heavy cover on the bottom of turn one during our first chance to actually do something we moved forward to look cool and take some objectives and then we turned things back over to Mark and JY at the top of turn two I lost my two archon leaders and and 10 of the remaining dark elar Warriors so at the bottom of turn two I had one dark lar Warrior left I shot a unit I charged a unit and I actually killed a model this was the Silver Lining right here this Warrior was the last one standing she ran out all alone and Fay a robot man then she died at the top of turn three or did she I like to think that she faked her own death returned back to the dark city with robot Parts as trophies and then she Advanced to the rank of archon the silver lining of this game is that we got a fun little story out of it as my Army grows I'm going to make sure to use this head on one of my archons to give it some real character anyway good game to Mark and Jim Mark and Jim are good lads and their minis make the battlefield look awesome even when they're all hiding behind rocks like cowards so I've played 40K in Third Edition fourth edition seventh edition eighth edition and now a couple of games of ninth Edition I've been trying for more than 20 years to like this game I love the models I like putting the models on the table and I love hanging out with my friends but I can't say that I've ever enjoyed the actual game play the start of eth was almost fun back in the simplified index days but so far ninth Edition has been kind of miserable I'm not just talking about Alpha strikes and balance issues either I'm talking about all the special rules that slow everything down I have a thesis Brewing that the core mechanic in modern 40K is muttering to yourself as you stare at your dice tray and try to adjudicate your rooll the muttering goes something like this reroll ones because unit is within 6 in of my archon and gets the overlord Ora set sixes aside for one extra AP because of Blade artists of kamora twos become threes because I'm cabala the black heart so it counts is turn three instead of turn two on the power from pain chart so I don't get the fansing fury ability no I do get the fening fury ability there's no reasonable expectation that an opponent will be able to follow along with any of this muttering there's just no way unless you devote an incredible amount of time to studying this game there are 20 armies in the game and the rules keep changing look I can follow along when my opponent makes a straight forward strength vers toughness rle but when they start adding in three special rules from their codec that I've never seen well it's just not worth the mental effort to try to stay engaged I'll wait for them to stop their muttering and then I'll look up from scrolling Instagram and I'll roll however many armor save dice that they see fit to hand me I'll take their word for it I guess so far the core experience of this game seems to be looking back and forth from your rule book to the dice tray while your opponent Waits it's minimal interaction with the game board minimal interaction with your opponent maximal interaction with the dice tray do the sixes do something special I supposed to roll the ones this time hold on let me flip a few pages and see I've got a bit of a rant building on how the complexity is choking the game but I'll either bury that down inside or save it for another time as a side note I've talked some of my pals into giving onepage rules a try I'm interested to see how the feeling of playing Grim dark future compares to the feeling of playing 40K okay let's get back to the fun part of 40K let's paint some minis here's the warrior who distinguished herself as the last trari standing I have at least one more of these heads floating around so I can upgrade this lady to an archon of high standing this is the official archon model from Games Workshop this is an option but it looks like this when it's built so it's not a very good option I have a few models from Warhammer underworlds that could be a good starting point for a custom archon conversion this chaos sorcerer could be a good option or perhaps one of these vampires I'll give it some thought at the very least I could give her a souped up Warrior model now it's time to get back to work on the bone armor I went hard with 60 Warriors in the early phases of this escalation to get a big core done and that'll free me up to do a wider variety of fun stuff we're making good progress on these Warriors though and I think it's going to be worth it for the first batch of 30 Warriors I shaded the armor with an all over wash of strong tone the side effect is that the wash darkened everything by multiple Shades The Next Step was to go over each mini twice to reestablish the midtone of skeleton bone while leaving the wash in the Deep recesses I've made a rule for myself that I should never put a dark wash over light colors because it requir so much cleanup but I frequently break my own Rule and I frequently regret it for the second batch of 30 Warriors for shading I'm pin washing and dark lining all of the chinks in the armor I'm using a mix of dark wood speed paint and strong tone for this step this step is obviously slower than an allover wash but it's also much neater and in the long run I think it's actually the faster choice there's still a bit of cleanup to be done but nowhere near as much after the shading and the clean up of the midtones I came back with two rounds of edge highlighting I love this kind of stuff this is straightforward meditation time for me and I think the end result is pretty dang cool there's a ton of contrast on these models and I think they look sharp the core troops of my Army are finally starting to look good the next game is 850 points everybody involved wanted to slow down the pace of escalation to catch up on painting a bit I just added an extra archon and a few extra special weapons I'll wait for game four to bring out all the cool vehicles and stuff like that that I'm loving this bone armor I think the individual models are starting to look cool the only problem is that from a distance the Army sort of looks like a sea of beige they're the least colorful models on the board I think if I add an accent color like a glow to the weapons or some markings on the armor I may be able to get them to pop no time for that now though game three is upon us Alex and I have teamed up again and this time the orc and jukari dream team are up against the double log Mark and Angie are both Fielding elar we rolled for initiative and the craft world lar are going first we're going to stop on this Cliffhanger those enemy eldars hiding back there behind coward Rock are about to take their first turn what'll happen next will the Dark Eldar make it to turn too stay tuned to find out also stay tuned to see me paint some sweet vehicles and see if we can get this Army looking really nice I'm excited to share The Joy of Painting with you and who knows maybe I'll find the joy in ninth Edition 40K and be able to share that with you too maybe all right so that was our escalation League now I don't want to leave you in suspense Alex and I we did lose that third game and we lost it badly now there was a fourth game in the series and then after that the league kind of fell apart for the normal reasons uh there were work trips mark had a second child congratulations a couple of those folks got affected by a World of Warcraft expansion and um yeah anyway that was kind of the end of The League we we gave it a shot unless maybe they kept going with the league and they just stopped inviting me that that is also a possibility in which case I forgive you you made the right call now um also not to keep you in suspense uh I did keep working on the Warriors and and the bone armor is looking better than it was before but they're they're still not done I still want to find a couple of color Pops to to Really finish them off and I think the bases need just a little something extra that I haven't figured out yet but someday there will be a A goobertown Hobbies video you know how to paint bone armor and I don't know when that's going to be might be a another year and a half from now or more but someday stay tuned I'm just glad you got to see our escalation league but anyway I want to dive into this issue of why it is that I haven't been able to enjoy the game of Warhammer 40K you know for 25 years off and on obviously I have attempted to play and enjoy this game and I keep bouncing off of it you know I've tried in like five different editions and it's never stuck and I think I finally understand and what the issue is now here's the hypothesis I am a Casual Gamer and Warhammer 40K is not for casual gamers that is a that's a bad mix and it was hard for me to come to this conclusion because I don't think of myself as a Casual Gamer I mean I have a YouTube channel about Miniatures I love shopping for minis I love painting minis I like hanging out with my friends I like seeing my friends armies I like you know organizing my minis into units organizing my units into armies I like you know I like it when our armies are facing off against each other on some sweet sweet terrain um yeah I I love it when our leaders end up battling on a cool piece of scenery like there are a lot of things I like about the idea of Warhammer that that mean that that's why I keep trying to enjoy this game um you know beyond that I like games I like RPGs I like customizable card games on the computer I like a lot of different strategy games I like real-time strategy games I like uh tactical turn-based strategy games like I really like Warhammer Total War I really like um XCOM Enemy Unknown uh these are all things that I like it so I don't think of myself as a Casual Gamer but I think when it comes to 40K I'm too much of a Casual Gamer and now my definition for this is based on how many games I play per year so here's a question for yourself in the last year how many games of 40K your Warhammer did you play and my answer I think normally averages out to like two or three games for some people that's going to sound like a really low number um and my understanding of the game is that's too low of a number to keep up with the rule changes but in terms of the number of Saturdays I want to play on this game like the number of times I want to refresh myself on the rules load up my armies drive somewhere spend an afternoon uh rolling Dice and and playing around with a measuring tape yeah about about two or three times a year sounds sounds great I've got other stuff that I like to do you know a couple times a year I want to play Magic Commander couple times a year I want to do um one shots for RPGs couple times a year I I want to dig into one of those computer games that I like now for all of those other activities you can put them down for a year or two years and come back and kind of pick off you know pick up where you left off uh uh Commander EDH magic Commander that's a game where I can pick up a deck that I haven't even looked at for years and go and hang out with my friends and just play a game and yeah there's a little bit of like remembering how the stack resolves and stuff like that but the for the most part all the stuff that I've learned about that game in the past is still valid when I want to when I want to just pick it up at any old time and give it a shot and that's not true for wor camera you know if uh if a friend calls me up and says hey come on over we'll do a one shot for DND D or a one shot for kalak cthulu or traveler like I may need to take 30 Seconds To Remember wait is that a D20 game or a D100 game and then like oh okay I got it I remember it's come back to me I'm good let's let's go yeah absolutely I want to go and and do a one shot RPG that sounds great but if a friend calls me up and says like hey I know I know we haven't played Warhammer for a year and a half but let's do it this Saturday come on over we'll give 10th edition a try no that sounds terrible to me because it's really hard to just pick this up as a casual player so that escalation League that we just watched that was ninth Edition 40K uh more than a year has elapsed and there's a three-year cycle of additions so ninth Edition is gone deleted its history and now you need to obtain and learn the 10th edition rules and that's a lot of work like that all whatever I happened to learn about that game during that escalation league is pretty much gone now and it's going to take a lot of work to get up to the level of just spending an afternoon playing um and you know getting to the point where you can basically get through a game like that's that's doable that's you know reading a couple things in the rule book and watching a YouTube video and then you can get through a game but I think to be at the level of understanding that it takes to actually enjoy a game I think that takes a lot of work um this is a game that has I don't even know 20 different armies and so if I read the core rule book and I read my codex I will know a small fraction of what's going on in the game and I might know some of my special rules but unless it's going to be a mirror match against another Dark Eldar Army I'm not going to know what special rules you have I don't know what I need to play around I don't know what kind of traps you're trying to set up for me um I don't know if you're trying to bait me into doing something um you know I I barely know what the units are supposed to do like I I I think that's an anti-tank unit I think that's an anti-infantry unit and that's kind of my level of understanding and at that level of understanding I have found that it's very frustrating when your opponent just starts saying like oh uh you got five mortal wounds coming at you I'm going to reroll all these ones um it's turn three so that means I get to double move this turn and I you know I don't know I'm just making up that stuff but that's that's the point is that I am never past the learning curve on this game this this game has such a big learning curve and I am never far enough along on that to understand what I'm doing and so I have found that it's just always a frustrating experience now like I said I'm I'm defining myself as a casual player based on the number of games I want to play per year there is a definitely another category of people who play play a lot of games every year they've gotten themselves through the learning curve they understand what's going on on the game board and they can play like an actual tactical game where they understand the consequences of taking out that unit versus taking out that unit they understand the consequences of what happens if that unit gets to you know camp on an objective um they understand what they need to do to achieve their goals in the game and I am not at that point and without the time investment of a lot of practice games it's hard to get there and so that's that's my basic understanding of I'm a casual player and the game is not designed for casual players but you know I've definitely seen hardcore players who are committed play this game they play it snappy because they know what's going on they're both clearly enjoying the game because they're able to think deep because they understand the consequences of various actions so I absolutely accept that this can be a fulfilling game but I have never found it to be the case because I'm just not that deep in now I'm going to use this as my opportunity to do just a little more complaining and grumbling the I'm going to say that the rule that I like the least in this game is any special rule that involves rrolling ones okay so in terms of understanding my opponent's Army I can understand a stat line I can look at a unit and say okay they've got really good ballistic skill I've got a couple of wounds and they've got okay uh strength and they've got you know kind of heavy armor you know whatever it is like I can understand the stat line and how that affects the state of play it's all of the special rules built on top of that that exist in a book that I will never look at that make me grumpy you know when and it's the interaction when your opponent starts to roll ones that's the one that always gets me that that sets me off a little bit so my opponent will be making let's say a shooting attack Roll and Roll a bunch of dice I will understand why they're rolling that many dice I will understand what they need to succeed on that dice roll cuz I understand the the core basics of the game but then they start picking out their ones in order to roll them and that's the moment where I no longer know what's going on clearly they are using some special rule in their rule book to roll those ones and see if they can get a few more successes but I don't know if they're rolling because I didn't kill that leader right there I don't know if they're rolling because they spent extra points to be able to do that I don't know if there was a way I could avoid that um I don't know if I should have changed my target priority earlier in the game to have things come out differently um but yes it's all those hidden abilities that the opponent has that I don't understand that always get me frustrated and the the quintessential one is when they just start rrolling ones on an attack roll and I've learned I've learned not to ask the question I've learned not to say wait why are you rrolling ones because the answer will never mean anything to me uh it will never increase my enjoyment of the game and it'll always just deepen my frustration so they start rrolling wands and I say wait what are you doing and they'll say oh yeah check this out and they'll turn to page 87 of a codex that I will never look at and they'll say my Army um my Army has pledged allegiance to the Backstreet Boys and uh because this unit is within 12 Ines of this unit um and also it's turn three so on turn three my Army enters uh beast mode because I paid the points to give them um the banner of Champions and uh in beast mode the Backstreet Boys will give them special ammunition and the special ammunition um it it causes their gun to Bing if they miss really really bad it doesn't Bing if they miss kind of okay like like close close calls it doesn't Bing but it Bings if they miss really really bad on a one and uh that it the Bing it tells them that they need to fire their gun again so you get another shot at hitting the enemy um and so so that's why I don't ask one of my opponents are rrolling ones is because it's going to be something like that and um boy I hope I just made up that rule I hope that rule doesn't exist but I know in my heart that something way too similar to it does exist and um if any game designers are listening out there um that's the kind of thing that casual players do not like like that it's not fun to just have just a pile of special rules dropped on you from a rule book that you will never own and never read it it's not a fun interaction like beyond beyond not knowing uh that that uh rule was in there or was was coming for me to get a couple of more hits on my units Beyond me just not knowing about that it's also the adjudication of that special rule is unsatisfying for everyone involved the process of double-checking whether or not you get to roll ones and then actually doing it that is an interaction between a dice box and a rule book there's no interaction with your opponent there's no interaction with the game board that is one player staring at their dice box double-checking a rule in their rule book going back to their dice box and picking out the ones it's not immersive it's not fun I mean I've I've heard some some players say oh I just want to I just want to roll dice it's a it's a beer and pretzel and dice kind of game you know I just want to want to get in there roll some dice and I think there actually is a small percentage of players who actually enjoy the um kinesthetic experience of rolling Dice and maybe those rules are for those people but I don't like if you want to write a rule that makes the unit better at shooting give them an extra ballistic skill give their weapon an extra attack like that at least I understand it makes sense it doesn't involve a separate uh wave of rolling um I can understand the results of the role that's all fine like and and if that's not granular enough you can you know further balance things with the point choices obviously Point values but anyway that's my Grump on that I've got one more grump for you cuz now is my chance to do it some people have written in the comments that the reason I didn't enjoy the game is because I didn't start my units behind cover and so I got deleted at the top of turn one and yeah yeah that that's true that's true that is not an issue of me being too casual that is me being too stubborn so I refuse to make my army look stupid and if you start your units all piled up behind uh L of sight blocking terrain I understand that that's tactically a good move it looks stupid like if you open any of these rule books any any old codex all of the pictures of armies are gloriously painted Miniatures charging at each other just just rearing to get into the fight and start beating each other up and they look amazing armies look awesome when they're running across the field to take objectives and do stuff armies look stupid when they're scrunched up behind line of sight block and terrain and I understand why the game steers people into that deployment strategy but it looks bad it doesn't look fun like the like I'm telling you this my understanding of this game is that it is not a fun enough game if you're just playing with like paper standies or tokens like the the reason this game is good enough that people play it is cuz the models look cool and the models don't look cool when they're scrunched up behind the terrain they just don't um so I refuse to do it I'm I'm too stubborn to uh start my units hiding behind coward Rock and that's going to mean I lose a lot of games um you know in addition to the fact I don't understand what the heck my opponents are doing because I don't uh play enough games to know what my opponents are doing but anyway that is that's the last little bit of grumping that I have to do for today um let's see here oh I do want to mention one other thing like I've I've kind of been talking about hardcore players who understand what's going on and enjoy the game versus casual players who have not been able to keep up with the constant rule changes and therefore don't know what's going on and don't enjoy the game I think there's I I mean there's many more types of players but one other type that I want to mention because probably some of you are watching this video now is the honeymoon player so I think that any game has a honeymoon phase when everything is new everything is Discovery you're figuring things out your friends are figuring things out out nobody is stomping each other yet and I think any game you can find some joy in that phase of of things um as an example just a couple of weeks ago I played in the Star Wars unlimited pre-release tournament so there's a new Star Wars card game and a local store was doing this event where you buy into the tournament you get SE six packs of cards everybody opens up their packs got an hour to make your deck and then and you play a thre match tournament that was great there were there were seven people in the tournament all of us had watched like one YouTube video to try to figure out what the rules were but none of us really knew what was going on so for all of us we were playing and we were reading our cards as we went and we were figuring out as we went um nobody had any broken combos yet we were just starting to figure out what interactions were powerful so nobody was getting stomped and it was great like I think that's a perfect example of a honeymoon phase of the game um and that's been my experience with every game that I've ever played in my life is the the first couple of games you can have a lot of fun because there's nobody's netdecking anything there's you know nobody's pulling out their their powerful special rules that you've never seen before um the the vanilla honeymoon version of games can be a lot of fun so there are some people watching this video right now who maybe think I'm a I'm a casual player and I'm enjoying my first games of 40K maybe you're a honeymoon player uh you know let let me know how you feel a couple additions from now uh check check back in check back in um yeah what else do I want to talk about yeah um like I said the my basic problem is that the rules change faster than my willingness or ability to learn them and so we're already almost a year into 10th edition 40K and I still haven't played a game of 10th edition and at this point I actually think it's wiser if I don't like I think I think I would be smart to avoid buying a rule book halfway through 10th edition 40K like the the strategy I think has to be if I'm going to give Warhammer 40K another try I need to wait to till the first day of the next Edition whether that's 11th or 12th or 13th whenever whenever I decide you know what you know Charlie Brown and the football I'm going to kick this 40K football this time for sure day one of the addition I'm going to buy the rule books and I'm going to get in and I'm going to play more than three games the first year more than three games the second year more than three games the third year then that audition will be done and I can can take a break um but yeah it's it's almost like a Sprint like learning the rules of the addition to a point where you can have fun with them is a Sprint where you're just you're you're racing to get into the Fun Zone before there's a hard reset on the game and everything that you learned gets deleted and um that seems to be the way of think things like again uh I'm sure there are people telling me why I'm wrong but as a casual player who really doesn't even know what I don't know and is not willing to put that amount of time and effort into it like that's been my experience trying to play five different additions over 25 years is that you're either you're either in with both feet or it's going to be kind of frustrating and uh you know I don't want to be a downer on on that but I just I wanted to use this video as a chance to explore why I had kind of a a sour time during that escalation league and so I wanted to explain those feelings and so that I could understand them um and also I wanted to give it this framework so that I could show you that video cuz I think there are some good bits in there but I wanted it to have um a little bit of prologue and this big old epilogue so that could really understand why it was that I was being a little bit bitter in there um and uh yeah in hindsight we can laugh at it a little bit but I do think I understand what's going on now I appreciate that you've been hanging out with me and listening to me ramble but I am done rambling for now so um yeah that's it for today and thanks so much for watching

Channel: Goobertown Hobbies

Views: 194,432

Keywords: Warhammer, Warhammer40k, warhammer 40k, 40k, WH40K, AOS, games workshop, ttrpg, tabletop gaming, miniature painting, dark eldar, drukhari, how to play warhammer, learn to play, learn to paint, airbrush, escalation league, slow grow league

Id: XogVrWgOZ2o

Length: 50min 51sec (3051 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024