Hey internet, it’s JStove, and I have a stupid idea. How stupid?
EDITORS NOTE: This article was written for 7th edition 40k back in 2014. BUT the article itself still has merit now-a-days with the way everything is going currently. – Enjoy
Well, maybe its convert-an-army-of-space-marines-to-be-goatmen dumb.
Maybe its “Hey, let’s post an opinion on the internet!” Dumb.
Maybe its “Don’t ever read the comments on Bell of Lost Souls articles.” Dumb.
It’s at least one of those kind of dumb, and for the record I love Goatboy conversions.
OR MAYBE ITS BRILLIANT?
No, its probably just dumb. Or at least that’s what everyone on the internet will say. But screw ’em.
What’s the name of this idea?
HIGHLANDER TOURNAMENT FORMAT.
What does that mean? There can be only 1. Of everything. And of some things- There can be only none.
There can be only 1 codex– No allies. No force org detachment shenanigans. Everything in your army comes out of 1 book. No White Scars allied with Clan Rock-On to get a Gorgon Chain, no Tau allied with Farsight Tau, no Taudar, Eldtau, no 10 cultists and a heldrake, none of that garbage, no battle brothers conveniently sharing their perks from their independent characters. (Which I see some TOs already cracking down on anyways) Everything comes out of 1 book, or in the case of supplemental codices that use a parent codex, everything counts as coming out of 1 book.
Now, I’m not personally against Forgeworld, escalation, or strongpoint- I actually think Forgeworld is great and adds much needed dimension to the game. But I think we all agree that having to carry an armload of books and dataslates with FAQ printouts from table to table between rounds is a total gong show. Its already bad enough that demon players have to spend 5 minutes before every game just figuring out what kind of magical toys their dudes have, (and soon we’ll see that with guard players with their dirt cheap divination psykers that dont take slots floating around) let’s cut the bureaucracy and keep it all in one codex, for simplicity’s sake.
Special Characters- There can be only NONE!– Here’s an idea, they’re all banned. Let’s be objective with ourselves as a 40k community here, we all know who the cool kids are. We all know who is captain of the football team, we all know who left a floater in the pool.
Coteaz is practically obligatory in all imperial armies. That jerkwad Dark Eldar punk just shows up on his surfboard and makes normal Eldar better.
Big Bird Fateweaver is part of the demon deathstar formula. Every army book has at least 1 guy in it with a stupid, scary sounding name that is just point-for-point better than everyone else in the book, and half the cheesy WAAC army lists that have ever been created to clog up the internet tubes have his name on it. Its dumb, its not fun, and it needs to go away. No game was ever made better by Coteaz or Baron Surfs Up being on the table, their inclusion in the game can only lead to cheeky shenanigans. They’re all banned until we all learn to have nice things, and the next person who says shenanigans is getting pistol whipped.
Force org slots- There can be only 1!– Here’s another curve ball for you. No spam allowed. You can only have one of every unit in your army list, including troops. For every Elite, Heavy, or Fast org slot you fill, you ‘unlock’ a redundant troop choice. So if you’re playing Marines, you can have a scout squad and a tactical squad. To get another tactical squad, you buy some assault marines.
Why do this? Because its obvious. Listbuilding is a game of winners and losers. Some units like shrouded biomancy nurgle princes and wave serpents are great, and some units like vespids and mutilators will never ever come out of their shrinkwrapped boxes and will sit in a warehouse somewhere in Nottingham until the end of time. Picking the winners and losers in a codex is something the whole internet gets together to do in the first 48 hours the codex hits the shelf, and then we all as a group of people who hate fun get together and decide what the meta is going to look like for the next 3 months or until the next wave serpent or riptide shows up.
Picking winners and spamming them doesn’t make you good, it makes you boring. So what if you had to pick up some dead slots just to make your army work? What if you actually had to try? What if that was actually interesting? Would anyone miss double dragon or flying circus? I doubt it.
There’s two other good reasons for this.
1) it actually rewards collectors and hobbyists who own one of everything, even though certain units would never hit the table in a competitive meta. The fact that everyone has to have a stinker or a suboptimal choice somewhere in their list lets the more casual player actually show up with something cool and not get wiped off the table immediately by auto-include power units.
2) it makes units that manipulate the Force Org chart- Chaos lords, biker marine captains, tervigons- Way more relevant and drastically shifts the force org meta in a big way. Getting a meta shift out of a force org slot swap was always a big deal, but in a format where troop choice is limited, its even more of a big deal. Theme lists that stick to a slot swap carry a lot more weight, rather than just being a perk to free up a power unit to score, because now, hey- redundant scoring units have an opportunity tax paid for in another slot.
Now, is there weaknesses in this proposed format? Of course there are. I’m sure something that I didn’t think of is glaringly wrong to the point of game breaking fun-rape, and it will take someone all of 5 minutes to write up a list that will ruin my whole idea.
Personally, I hope its a Goatboy GoatHands army with a bike Goat carrying a Goat Chain.
But the point is, its at least something different. Because really, how many 2 headed freak birds do you really want to see on the table every freaking weekend? Because between Kairos and Coteaz, the whole Muppet bandwagon is getting a little crowded. -Jstove
