"The Hurrah"

Six days after the drop of the New Rulebook the Expert Hats have a whopping 12 games in, a couple battle reports, and hundred paragraphs telling us that the game is a Trainwreck and NEEDS immediate Expert Hat intervention to cobble together something that might resemble a tabletop war game. Blatantly they tell us that we don't even need to read their explanation, just know that they have put in the time and hard work to figure out just the right set of House rules and Limitations required to play the game correctly. In one seven-hour battle report they illustrated just how convoluted the rulebook is, how obviously broken the demon factory list is, and how unfair and unfun and just plain "stupid" the Maelstorm missions are. These guys sure are ultra scientific, how can we not appreciate their Exhaustive study. 

It all for show, a drama: we are being put together.

They tell us that "casual players" attend "grand tournaments" because they just want to get out of the house and have a go at a new, varied opponents. That these so-called casual players make up the bulk of Generals at such events, and that the House Rules and Limitations are NEEDED to provide an environment of "fun" variety. They say that these players don't want to win, but want to at least have the perception that winning is possible. 

They want us to believe that their Houserules both fix the game AND don't impact the game enough to change it into something else entirely. Just like a demon factory being so over powered that it cant win a Maelstorm mission Because the missions are broken. Never mind that they brought a list to a game that they knew before hand would have issues getting to objectives across the board. A complete charade designed to convince the mark (the rest of us) that their changes are absolutely necessary, and urgently needed. 

In just twelve games they have decided that the entire ruleset requires a huge amount of House rules and Limitations to meet all of these Obvious Requirements. The very same folks that have thrown out Relic and The Scouring just to turn around and complain about Flyer Lists. The very same folks that implemented the 2++ nerf and then at their very event explained that the top-eight lists proved that their Houserules did not impact the metagame, that it was purely to make sure that casual players had the mental perception that deathstars had been handled somehow. 

Its garbage on top of complete garbage delivered with a straight face like true professionals.

They want us to pay them to attend their Limited-40k Event so that we don't have to suffer the horribleness of a true 40k Unlimited Grand Tournament. They have spent more time writing articles about how Obviously Broken the entire game is then they have playing it, but they have the badass cranial apparel, so they are Obviously Correct. Tournaments and competitive events that you pay to attend and travel to are for the casual player after all, and the Expert Hats shoulder a massive responsibility.

There is no need to put in the hardwork necessary to defeat the demon factory. There is no need to build a list capable of winning Maelstorm missions. There is no need to even consider Altar of War missions even though they came hand in hand with the Super Heavies and Lords of War. They have done it all for us, they have fixed the game with timely set of House rules and Limitations to the rescue! If you dont agree then you are a stupid crazy heretic.

A classic con going just as planned. Provide an urgent need - unthinkable train wreck Heresy, and a chance at a big payoff - fun and trophies for all. 

WARNING: Your Grandmother may be reading your FaceBook right this moment!!!

The way we are going to do this right is by first rejecting the Expert Hat's insistence that they are the arbiters of How 40k should work on the tabletop. 

What has been going on is that the self appointed experts communicate intimately with each other, then they decide collectively on how most stuff will be done, and then they feed it to us in long articles, sometimes with graphs and charts and ultra-scientific polling. They make long winded explanations about why they are an Expert and so that justifies and canonizes their Opinion as Fact. They have done it consistently over the last two years and now have so much momentum they don't even believe they owe us explanations or justifications anymore - if someone disagrees they just declare it as uneducated inexperienced Heresy. 

We don't have a problem with forging a narrative or making up your own rules as you go. As champions of The Rulebook we would be hypocrites if we did, as The Rulebook tells you do do just as much. Its how they package themselves and their product and related products, the ridiculous reasoning and justifications or lack thereof, the lack of transparency and influence on how rules changes and limitations are enacted, the falseness behind their claim that they are just doing what We are asking them to do, and the dishonesty about the business side of thing - that their business-model includes making a buck from us. 

We want to throw out the layers of complication added by so-called Experts over the last two years. All of their assumptions and grandeur of experience doesn't hold much water anymore because they have squandered our confidence. In many ways we never even played 6e. They threw out whole sections of the game, hated their own metagame, and then were forced to make rules changes - we went straight to 6.1 and ended up with 6.4.23. The Expert Hats acted too quickly in the past with too little research and too much salesmanship and we let them.  We want to start at the beginning, the baseline, the Rulebook - Actually play the New Game. 

Choosing Your Army, The Most Important Rule and Preparing For Battle

The game already has a natural hierarchy with a huge variety of army-tools and competitive scenarios. Fundamentally we want to play the game as intended from list building to tabletop deployment to tactical and strategic decision making and gamesmanship.

 1st -No Composition Limits. Bring what you want to play, and play to win. 

2nd - Roll-off. If there is any type of problem, roll it off and keep playing.

3rd - Play the missions and victory conditions: Roll-off, the winner selects either Eternal War or Maelstorm of War mission table and rolls a mission to play. If either army contains a Lord of War, then the winner of the mission selection roll-off could also choose to roll a mission from the Altar Of War mission table.

There is no time for Peace. No Respite. No Forgiveness. There is Only War!

Lets play 40k! Lets MURDER and DESTROY each other on the tabletops with no Mercy!  Lets make only the smallest changes necessary, and only when they are actually necessary. Something we can only discover by taking off the gloves and going at it as intended in the Grim Darkess of the Far Future. 

Lets reject silly excuses, false expertise and loudness as reasons to modify... anything. Lets go actually find out whats out there in the Warp for ourselves and stop blindly following around the guys with the coolest or most expensive Hats. Lets demand that we actually be treated like a community and not a mob of idiots. 

We done plowed this furrow clean down to the bedrock! Time to rest the mule.

Less than a week ago part of "the problem" the Expert Hats illustrated for us constantly was that GW was not listening or responding to "the community." The Expert Hats have stopped trying to convince us that GW doesn't care, cant do it, doesn't know how, doesn't listen, and doesn't respond. Now that they Know that GW seems to care, and that they have definitely responded. The Expert Hats have shifted to "continued innovation." They will make the Houserules and Limitations now fast and quick to prevent bad habits in players - namely playing the game as written and intended.

GW has responded with a bucket of changes. They got rid of a ton of stuff the Expert Hats hated and had thrown out literally less than two years ago with the release of 6e. Area terrain and mysterious terrain is now basically non existent. Terrain Placement is gone, double roll off for deploy and table halves gone, fortifications only deploy in your deployment zone vs table half and score - just to name a few items. They also doubled down on many elements they obviously want in the game, namely whats allowed and how to build your army: dataslates, supplementals, more than two sources of Murder. There is no confusion on where they stand now, and so there is no further NEED or Justification on that level for the Expert Hat's Solutions. Now its about saving face, spinning the problem correctly to gain the hearts and minds of the masses. Its about ticket sales, markup, and profit.

The Real Problem for the rest of us is that we don't have any GW provided Tournament system, we don't have a organization like DCI or USCF with transparent rules and systematic manners for becoming members, ascending into leadership, or have anything like a real say or vote or direct influence on how to run tournaments, handle "rules issues," or rank players. This is the real hard part of the problem we have to deal with, the Problem the Expert Hats are using as their utmost excuse for everything. The other real problem is that everyone wants to make a buck and a whole bunch of those jokers want to make a buck without telling you so - they actually use the shear amount of effort, sacrifice and grandness of it all to sell themselves and justify their fabulous cranial apparel.

WAR ON A NEW FRONT

So that's where we start now - a booming and motivated rejection of Limited-40k by way of self appointed Expert Hat clans. Step one is to be true advocates of  40k Unlimted: mythbusting the nonsense profit driven agendas of the Limited-40k Expert Hat Oligarchy, the Actual Champions of No Composition limits.

We want to see the smallest, least-impacting changes as possible For Ease Of Tournament Play. We want to see a working Player Ranking and Handicap system and we want to have an "accessible and transparent rules council." We want TOs to keep it simple and not make it into a salespitch filled with sophisticated "FIVE FIGURE" grandeur.

The Expert Hats are already screaming Heresy! They will undoubtedly unleash a War of illegitimacy on us without remorse. Remember when they start to string us up for the lions to tear apart in front of the crowd who's pocket your silver is going into just for the chance to enter the Colosseum.

Get ready for a Fight! For those of you Lone Wolves behind enemy lines please know that The Basket is Near the Mantle... the rest of you prepare for MURDER and GLORY on the tabletops, or start picking out what kind of sauce you would like with your Expert Hat, because we promise to Provide and guarantee a wide variety of Flavors.

That’s so good, it makes me wanna slap my mamma!

They say they have to Act Fast to prevent players from getting used to playing a "certain way" that could undermine their organized events. 

Wow - the kind of stuff you will start to say when you are in charge. 

I submit that the very speed and vastness of their rule changes and "solutions"  specially in light of their self declared Expertness is all the evidence we should need to throw their garbage out with just as much quickness. Not even 48 hours into the new RULEBOOK they claim to have tested so exhaustively - enough to basically change or "limit" almost every part of the New Game.  They tell us, someone MUST take the reigns on this beast!

They strike straight at the heart of the game by not just suggesting that we all ban "stupid-unfun" Unbound, but that we also need to go directly against the grain and limit detachments. They did this one exactly to us over the last eight months (and longer with 2xFOC) and this was GW's response, "Any number of Any type of detachments." Thats how lists are built now, its how GW wants us to play the game they have designed - live it it and embrace it. Its ok to be pissed off at GW not agreeing with you, but taking it out on the rest of us Again is not acceptable. I dont think we should be throwing anything out at this point, Unbound included, as it is part of the Game structure provided for us.

Next they want to completely change or "limit" the new Allies system AND the new Psychic phase. Again, forcing the implementation of their system of 40k - changes they already made For Ease Of Tournament Play over the last year, changes that GW obviously does not agree with. The ink on our new Rulebooks is hardly dry and they have come to the fast conclusion that they are in the position to fix what needs to be fixing. Hands off you blood suckers! Again, there is no possible way they have tested or done anything that would be necessary to actually justify such sweeping core game mechanic changes. 

Thats just the old "problems" they are still chasing around, and now its our natural vocabulary just to go and limit or ban something instead of actually figuring out how to solve it on the battlefield. Holy shit, the new rulebook lets players endlessly spawn deamon hoardes? Better hurry up and ban that obviously broken stuff before someone plays it and develops bad habits of reading and following the rulebook!

They use "abuse," "stupid," "not fun," "not fair," as magical buzzwords that command community response and fast action! They are hypocrites with a agenda for profit that they criminalize GWs with while hiding their own schemes for whats in our wallets. They are Flim Flam men - con artists who gained our confidence long ago and are now lording it over the community they praise as strong and just and intelligent. Just the right combo of Expert Hat and Carny to keep us all on the hook. 

Which means instead of using the natural game tools provided to us by the game designers to stop the "stupid, abusive" 2+ re-rollable save we will instead keep the Old Guard's Houserules. All of them. Instead of playing 40k we are playing a game of make your own game. The Expert Hats have already banned everything, and will inform us along the way of what is allowed.

GW has spoken. They wrote to us on the 25th anniversary of 40k telling us exactly what they planned to do with the game. Since then, they have done exactly as they said they would. The Expert Hats smashed the 6e rulebook to pieces fighting against almost every major element of the game. They are doing the same now but with even more lightning speed and ruthlessness. They used to say look GW doesn't know what they are doing in any way whatsoever, besides they are evil as they are out to make profits right? They said nothing was intentional, nothing designed intelligently, nothing play tested.  GW has published Many supplements, updates, new sourcebooks, and now a new Rulebook that even had an introductory preparatory bombardment of VIDEOS that said bluntly we did this on purpose, with intention, and as a response. How many other forms of communication must GW use for the so-called Experts to get it?

So we get down to the real problem. Its not GW, its that GW doesnt tell us how to run and sanction Tournaments, or rank players - that a lot of other games and game companies do. The Expert Hats are exploiting this actual flaw and have declared themselves the masters of such, simply because they are doing it - and that is the problem that we the actual community should go about solving. We are the problem since we are allowing the Expert Hats to appoint themselves. They even tell us that - they HAVE to do this, because we want them to, and now we are at a point where "Zero Comp" actually means a long list of Composition Limits and Houserules, and we aren't even just a little bit of the path, we are so far lost we dont up from down. The Expert Hats have made so many sweeping changes and are not just considering more, but planing on how and when to roll them out that we are no where even close to playing the actual game of 40k.

Goin' around your ass to get to your elbow...

Finally the New 7th Edition Rulebook has arrived and we can look forward to the newest incarnation of the wild wild west. Rules changes, Rule "fixes", the New Psychic Phase, Allies in all Directions, SUPER HEAVY WALKERS, D Weapons, Reserve Shennanigans, and many other fun tweaks and updates. Excitement here, as we have a new Bible to War over. HOWL!!!

The Expert Hats are Pissed Off and Rowdy! The 7th Edition rulebook amounts to an almost simple update to the last ruleset, including pretty much every change GW has published throughout the life of the last edition - dataslates, supplemental codex, Inquisition, Imperial knights, Stronghold, and Escalation. Its a compilation of all the stuff they said they were going to do, did and then have had to re-do because their actions and words were being written off as unintentional and uninformed. Almost every major pushback to their ruleset was addressed in systematic order. A big and obvious Fuck You to certain Expert Hat Clans that have been re-writing the game in huge casual rule changing sweeps. 

Sadly, the Expert Hats warned us over the last couple weeks that if the New Rulebook wasent up to their standards, they were ready and willing to make the appropriate changes, fixes, and corrections necessary For Ease Of Tournament Play. As soon as some solid leaks hit the internetz they immediately praised the similarities to the last ruleset as easy to implement and kindly thanked GW for putting all the new crappy stuff into neat little sections that could be easily cut out and ignored.  

Now less than 1 day after the release of the New Rulebook, the Expert Hats have already exhaustively tested all of the updates, changes and additions. They have each popped out their mandatory 5 page essay on the good the bad and the solvable, and have already presented us with a list of changes, limitations, and outright bans to fix the game that they love to hate. At least the last time we got a new rulebook they pretended to test stuff for at least a week before starting their piss parade.

Are we going to let them feed us the same shit again? We are going to knowingly stand around and watch them build the machine without all the parts? When they start to complain about thier broken metagame and layer us all with another set of changes, who will be the true idiots? Please dont drink the kool aid!!!

We need to play the game this time before we go about fucking it up. We need to start at the very beginning and work through this like we aren't a frenzied mob of pure idiot followers. I am Douglas Of Wolfbrothers, and I love to play 40k. I just paid a $100 Expert Hat tax because the Expert Hats want to Sell us their version of 40k and literally put the profit into their pockets.  They remind us all the time of how Much money Is involved in the 40k business as a way of dazzling the crowd into purchasing the latest finely packaged snake oil product. In the same breath they will declare loudly that they want to be fully inclusive of all (take everyone's money) - but if you dont like their show, then shut the fuck up, and go somewhere else, or do it yourself.

Obviously that kind of shit is par for the course in every industry, every endeavor - they just get away with it more and with less effort in a community full of toy painters. We should reject and resist this hijacking of the game. As the Expert Hats love to remind us - they are innovators, and are fully invested in their reputations as such. Its actually one of the reasons they are Experts, after all. 

Right now they are telling us how fucked up it all is. How much time and effort and money they have put into becoming Experts and that we need to keep investing in them to show us the light and run tournaments for us. Its the only way. The game they have fully tested in less than 24 hours is so broken that their way is NEEDED, and that is Obvious, and that you are a Crazy Idiot Heretic if you even consider thinking otherwise. Then they will say either Pay Up or Fuck Off - they are in charge and know it.

Is your decision is to pay the $100 Expert Hat Tax, and then pay up how many thousands of dollars to some assholes to tell you all the shit inside it you cant use, For Ease Of Tournament Play?

Start at the beginning. Lets play the missions. Lets play the rules as written for a bit here before we start fucking it up. Lets actually have something to complain about before we send in SWAT. Lets find some shit that Is Actually Fucked up on the tabletop in the Actual game as intended and Nuke that shit very specifically if we all decide its necessary. Lets come up with an actual way for us to all decide these things instead of blindly following and parroting the loudest assholes with the coolest cranial apparel. Lets do this with at least some semblance of dignity and brain power instead of just swallowing because we are told to. 

Lets play 40k! Lets destroy and murder each other on the tabletops! Lets knock off this professionally choreographed pottery exhibition - and if we are going to start paying FIVE FIGURES for catering at a Grand Tournament that has a list of donts longer than the $100 rulebook, we sure as fuck better be getting Tangerine Lobster Rangoons and Champagne Mimosas delivered to us during the game. Was the last Con you attended actually worth your dollars? 

That Makes About As Much Sense As Tits on a Riptide

"...have we deteriorated to the level of dumb-beasts?"

The myth-origin story of the naysayers and their tasty Expert Hats is coming to a cataclysmic end. All of their doom-saying about the unintentionally written word of GW returns full circle to spew game-designer sauce in all directions.

The sad fact of the entire gushing interweb explosion is that we are already playing 40k 6.5 edition, and have been since almost the first day. Since before the wet 6e rulebooks hit the shelves and made it into our grimy hands the Expert Hats that rule the 40k competitive scene with an Iron FAQ/houserule document have force fed us THEIR version of 40k. They didn't like Mysterious stuffs, random warlord traits, random charge distances, allies, double force org chart, and many other aspects of the new game and told us so since before the rules even got to us normal folk.

They have shouted the same nonsense since the very first day almost two years ago. Each subject, each tiny rules issue they have created they have used the same tired logic. "GW doesn't know what its doing, doesn't know how to read or write, doesn't playtest, has no intention behind their actions, its so bad that WE need to act, WE NEED TO FIX IT." This logic is now the accepted bottomline assumption. As a competitive community we never even tried it the way It Was INTENDED.

Some items they have successfully eliminated from any iota of possible competitive play while other items they have grudgingly accepted. While they went about changing the very foundation of the game (the rules themselves) they have complained out the other side of their mouths that the metagame, the game they have created, is broken.

Now they sit in judgement, a "council" of self appointed expert elders, deciding how to play or NOT play each supplement, each book, each new release, each rule. GW says Imperial Knights are slowed by difficult terrain - well IF you even get to play your new robots (or Inquisition codex, or nid/tau dataslate) then they are not slowed by difficult terrain per the rules, they Expertly made their own nifty Fix It rule that allows them to move twice as fast as obviously unintentionally intended by GW.

Mysterious terrain is almost never played anywhere. Relic, Scouring, and Big gun missions in that order are modified or thrown out entirely by most TOs. Terrain placement is a joke. Double force org rarely sees the light of day. And while they go about these sweeping ignorant outright rule changes they complain about Flyers, they complain about Monsterous Creatures, they complain about look out sir, psychic powers, and deathstars.

They hated the game so much they made their own, and then hated it. All of these ignored, changed, or new rules impact "the game" greatly, from deciding on which Tournament you will travel to, how to build a list, and which models to buy, then there is the actual playing of the game part. The unintentionally written rules in the BRB and accidentally penned mission formats were so bad, they put their Expert Hats on and declared we will play multiple objectives in various flavors, every single tournament round, and that's how to make shit "fair."

When Escalation and Stronghold were published, with more unintentionally written words from GW they used the mere existence of these sourcebooks as great justification to go about making sweeping rules changes. Instead of just ignoring whole sections of the unintentionally written rulebook, they literally just started making their own - and you are a Crazy Heritic if you do not agree with them, as the current game is "obviously broken." No mention or acceptance that we are now playing Your game, not the one we purchased. We now live under the rule of the Iron FAQ/Houserule Packet - and have really since the dawn of 6e and our blind following of the folks wearing Expert Hats.

So now the extraterrestrials have returned to explain to us that WE are the extraterrestrials. The same group of Expert Hats will find a way to Try to convince us that none of the written words were written on purpose, with intent. That the game designers don't know how to design games or the consequences of their ignorance.

As they sell us the same line of "I LOUDLY DECLARE THAT MY HAT IS SMARTER, " - Are we all going to drop to ours knees Again and swallow their load of nonsense whole or shall we come to our senses this time and reject the assholes who dye their hat with whichever color of orange is the new black and tell us how much of an Expert they are at playing 40k that they get to decide which rules and which words are worthy and which are not? I hope we do learn from our mob mentality mistakes over the last two years - until December I thought most of you were smarter than that.