Hello citizens of the Imperium, Jstove here (the Louis Black of Spikey Bits), and I want to tell you all about how the forces of chaos, nids, space-elves, and giant bugs are plotting to bend you over and take you to bad touch town with their hottest new spam list for unbound armies.
Actually, this article isn’t about that. Well wait no it is-
Because we’ve already started talking about the stupid lists we’re all theorycrafting for the big date, I just want to throw out the BEST ONE that none of you have thought of yet because you’re all so busy trying to cram the table full of lemon russians or space pastries or hel turkeys.
The real best in show is MAWLOC WHACK A MOLE or is it WHACK A MAWLOC? You take infinite mawlocs, then you rotate them in and out of ongoing reserves, pop them up for S6 AP2 hits, hit and run them off and reserve them again, and you do this with like, I dunno, 8 god damn mawlocs because its funny and they’re only 140 points for a giant T6 W6 monstrous creature that can’t be locked in combat. The best part? The more dumb spam your opponent fills the table with, the better this goofy idea actually works, because then the mawloc can’t pop anywhere without doing 2 rounds of S6 AP2 pie plates.
That’s my contribution to the 7th ed speculatory idiot farm for today.
Ahem.
That’s not what I really wanted to talk about. What I really wanted to talk about is how great 7th edition is going to be, because its going to be TOURNAMENT ORGANIZER EDITION, or as I like to call it, “My favorite edition.”
We’re all currently completely bent/ecstatic/flabbergasted that unbound armies are going to be a real thing. They effectively already are, thanks to supplement army books, PDF downloads, and wacky formations, the only reason you don’t see them is because the internet meta machine has already decided they’re ineffective and has moved on to write more deathstars. You can already effectively throw out the force org chart, you can already run quad riptides. We never needed that excuse that 7e is finally giving us.
40k was never a water-tight, finely tuned, balanced game, and it never tried to be, and that’s not their fault. They’ve been more or less completely up front about that since the beginning, its on us to make the game playable, we’re just lazy. It was always the TOs in the indy GT scene that put in the effort to try to make it a game with a level playing field, and as time marches on and games like Malifaux, warmahordes, and infinity continue to deliver tightly-designed rules, GW just keeps soldiering on in the opposite direction.
So what do we do, quit 40k and go play warmahordes because the rules are better?
The point is this- There’s an Illuminati of TOs in this country who are constantly trying to smooth out the game, because they’re in the hobby business and they live and die on the strength of the hobby. GW will still sell models if the game is borked, that’s what they do. TO’s only sell tickets and get prize support if the game is worth playing, and its their job to make that happen.
They are the only group of people who are committed to un-screwing the game into something that doesn’t trip over itself when it walks, and that doesn’t just benefit competitive players that want a fine, tight, even game, that benefits everyone. Even the people who just show up at the shop on saturday to play a casual 1500.
We’ve already seen TOs tweak re-rolling 2+ saves, because it makes the game better.
We’ve already seen them ban Grimoire of True Wins, because it makes the game better.
We’ve already seen them tweak battle brothers to not hand out heinous, game-breaking bonuses to allied armies, because it makes the game better.
It is not the TO’s job to make the game better for the WAACtard. The WAACtard will do whatever he needs to do to win in any framework he is given, that’s just what he does. It is the TO’s job to make the game better for YOU.
Remember, on May 24th, GW will leave the building. The force org chart, which was already irrelevant if you knew how to tweak it, will disappear completely.
There is no governing body from your lord and masters at Nottingham that will defend you from the WAACtard hordes and their spammy mayhem.
There is not enough arguing on Bell of Lost Souls to save you from having to tell people you might not play them because they’re taking a douchebag list.
The solution is here and it always has been here, the players must represent the players, and the shepherds of that flock are the TOs.
