31 - Where We're Going, We Don't Need Roads

In this episode of the "Grown Men Playing With Toys" podcast, Erik and Steve do something a little different — they look backwards and forwards at the same time, connecting the dots between the past seven months of Erik's Crusade League and the most anticipated edition change in years.

Erik is approaching the finish line of his local game store's Crusade League and has thoughts — a lot of them. Steve, meanwhile, has been deliberately avoiding 11th Edition previews, which means you're getting his completely unfiltered reactions. Together they explore:

• The Crusade League retrospective — the highs, the lows, and the moment Erik just let go of the rope on all that bookkeeping
• Why "narrative" and "competitive" have never actually been opposites — and why 11th Edition might finally admit that
• Detachment mixing and the 3-2-1 point system — game changer or balance whack-a-mole waiting to happen?
• Force Dispositions — and why Erik and Steve will never have to do the awkward mission chicken dance again (we hope)

Whether you've ever shown up to a casual Crusade game only to discover every unit across from you is a hard counter to your army, argued uncomfortably over the pregame board setup, or just wanted your hobby to feel a little more narrative and balanced - this one's for you.

Check out our other content: https://gmpwt.blog/ https://www.youtube.com/@GrownMenPlayingWithToys

Transcript

Intro

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is a two player game. You will interact with your opponent. You don't just get to show up in there and a non player character in your game of 40K.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

Welcome to the Groom Men Playing with Toys podcast. They said we're too old. We said hold our dice. We're your hosts, Eric and Steve. Eric, how are we feeling today?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

We're feeling Zyncian. Come on, man.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Seriously, that's the word you're going with. Yeah, we're going with Zyncian. It fits. Okay. Um I don't really even know where to go with that. So um why?

SPEAKER_00 1:10

So for you know, spoiler for the topic we're gonna talk about, it involves some looking forward to the future. It involves some looking backwards to the past. And that sounds an awful lot like the rules for Kairos Wait Fate Weaver, who is the named demon, uh named greater demon of zinc. So we're feeling Zinchian.

SPEAKER_02 1:32

Okay, now I understand where you're going from. Oh, geez. Come on, man. That that was uh So I know what the topic is tonight, and that was not even remotely close to a word that I would have thought would have been how you're feeling today. Okay, all right. Well, do you want to describe the topic that we're gonna talk about tonight? Because I I think I think you should describe it from your words, and then I want to I want to kind of dig in on it.

SPEAKER_00 2:01

So, and the other reason I'm feeling Zentian is it's not just one topic, we're gonna intermix two topics. So we're going to, I'm approaching the end of the the crusade league that I've been playing in. So we're gonna do a retrospective on how the crusade league has done, you know, my experience with it, kind of what I liked, what I didn't like, and then we're gonna combine that with what we've seen so far from the 11th edition previews and kind of connect the dots between the two of them. And you know, the the spoiler alert there is a lot of the critiques that I have of Crusade connect directly to things that they've already previewed for 11th edition. So we're gonna go back and forth between you know my past experiences from this past six months and looking ahead to an edition release that's coming in the next two to three months.

SPEAKER_02 2:57

Okay, so let's first of all, congratulations on making it through the crusade. Um, I think that's pretty cool. Uh a new way for us to play, right? Um, I know you're you're kind of spearheading it, but we we took some of that interaction into um some of the the things that we've done in Barnhammer and stuff like that. So it's been pretty cool to see you kind of go through that whole experience and um kind of the non-traditional crusadeness of what you guys are doing. Um you kind of semi-sorta turned it into like a crusade uh league tournament thing, um, which is cool. I mean, it's all about you know making it whatever it is to have fun, right? And so I think it's pretty cool that that your LGS went kind of even a different direction with what Crusade can be. Um, but you've been you've been kind of like highs and lows with this, right? So from my perspective in your crusade uh career here, um you know, there's times you come home from the LGS and you're just like, dude, this thing happened. It was so exciting, all this stuff happened, it was so funny. I had the best of time, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, and you're just you're just excited. And then there's times you come home and you're like, uh it was good. I liked it. And I'm like, okay, all right, yeah. Well, what happened? Well, you know, so this thing kind of creeped in there, and you know, this happened, and some of the things that we've talked about on the podcast when we come to thinking about, you know, creating good matchups or creating like a positive experience for the other person, or for you know, taking away from the game, like those things tend to come up. So, so overall though, describe to me what what the experience has been.

SPEAKER_00 5:02

So, do you want me to describe my feelings and reactions, or do you want me to walk through a you know five-minute synopsis of how it's gone, you know, number of games I've played, that kind of stuff, or both.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Why don't you give us an overview first of like what

Crusade League Overview

SPEAKER_02 5:18

what kind of the crusade, the crusade, the crusade league um has been for you, how it kind of works, and then and then give that kind of like breakdown of you know how many games, you know, what you did, and then yes, of course, I want to hear your feelings about the subject.

SPEAKER_00 5:37

Sure. So I'm seven games deep. I've got one more to go in two weeks, and then the league wraps up. Um you know, it's been on average a game every two to three weeks. Uh, and you know, there was a holiday break in there, and it's spanned across two different balance slate updates, which has been interesting because they did a rule a list lock at the beginning, but not a rules lock. Um, and it's a thousand-point uh crusade league, but you can build a 1,500-point roster with the ability to spend crusade points as you earn them to buy an additional 250 points of units. So, what I typically see is a lot of people are showing up with 1750 points of potential units, and then you get like this real awkward like kickball draft as everyone's trying to figure out what list they're gonna play that that is a good list into the other person. Um, you know, it it's been really fun. In general, what I've noticed is you know, crusade, it's got a different book that you play out of where you choose your missions. There's a lot more rolling for things that can be random. Uh there the crusade that we're playing, there's a the theme is chaos and demons. So there's a non-player character of demons where demons can randomly spawn, depend you know, definitely at the start of the game, but then at various points, depending on what mission you're playing and what the dice are. And so there's a level of randomness there that is really interesting. Uh, the missions are way, way different than typical tournament style 40k, which has been interesting to adapt to. Uh, and then the other thing I've noticed is like you have there's like so many different ways to uh earn different benefits by playing crusade. You can get experience on your guys, you can insert, you can get crusade points, you can get strategic points, you can complete agendas, you can get points for your team. And so it it's a tremendous amount of bookkeeping.

SPEAKER_02 7:54

It sounds like a spreadsheet, guys, Wonderland.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

I'll be honest, it's even a little bit much for me. And I think so so what we'll get into the feelings part of it here. So and as context of the feelings, because it's not gonna be like it's been fun, it's been a positive experience overall. I still prefer regular 40k as as a way of doing it.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

So with that aside, so let me give my outside perspective because I haven't been in the league, right? But I get I get like I get all the feedback from it, right? Um it sounds like there's a lot of adaptation that you can do throughout the experience, meaning um, so in I'm gonna go back to something that you said because I find it really interesting. So so you guys locked your lists in, right? Yes. But as balance slates come out, the rules change. So you're you're playing you're playing current to date rules, but you're locked in on taking your your characters and and your units that that you put together for well, you put together a 1500-point army, but that 1500 that that's that's your team. That's your who you're going through this whole thing, right? So then that that's kind of interesting because the rules are changing, right? So you have a moving target there, but at the same time, you're gaining like knowledge and victory points and what whatever it is that you're doing, so you're enhancing them to rules that are potentially changing. Like, that's crazy. So, so how did how how did you account for that? Like, I I mean, it kind of would make me be on the edge of my C every time a data slate came out.

SPEAKER_00 9:57

Honestly, I've my approach to it has just been I'm doing this for fun. And and honestly, I hit a point after about game five where I just started getting a headache with all the bookkeeping side of it. I was like, I'm just like, whatever my roster is now, that's what they are, and I'm just gonna spend all of the experience and everything else I earn to eliminate any battle scars as I pick them up so I don't have any negatives on my units, and then I'll just keep going as is. So that you know, overall, I think a part of my that what has been the roller coaster for me is my army has been power crept pretty substantially over the the course of the you know the the league, and a lot of that's self-induced. You know, it's I got real frustrated by the amount of bookkeeping about five, six games in, and I just I stopped trying to keep up with it. Some of it's also the army I'm playing, I'm playing Blood Angels, and there's another wrinkle which I I completely respect. Of the store owner said, Hey, I only want you playing with the latest and greatest GW plastic because I'm offering this for free. I'm not gonna charge anyone to be in the league, I'm and I'm gonna you know dedicate my time. And so I think, okay, I can do that, but most of my blood angels are are proxies, so I couldn't play what have evolved to be the meta choices. So my army over time has gotten less and less powerful, which is fine. I'm showing up there to to hang out and have a good time. Um, but what I've noticed is it it actually reminded me a lot of when we started playing Barnhammer, of over time, what I've seen, you you kind of made mention of this at the beginning, it started out as a let's do a crusade, and then it's evolved into let's do a league, and it started to become more and more competitive, and it gets to this really weird spot where, like, if you show up like I typically do of a, yeah, this is a crusade, let's just have fun, it's gonna be wacky, it's gonna be narrative. You show up and it's like, oh, I'm playing Blood Angels, and most of my army wants to charge, and the guy across from me has upgraded literally his entire army to be able to fights first. So this is yo, this is great. I'm glad I showed up for this.

SPEAKER_02 12:30

So it's almost like this like micro, like micro, I don't know, uh, economy that gets created inside of inside of this crusade that's now turned league, that's now turned into like almost like a mini version of your local game store meta, right? Meaning that um as you're transitioning through this process, um I'm assuming from what it sounds like that you can start knowing what the other person is playing because they're their 1500 points is locked in, right? So now you can start stacking your deck against each other, right? Which I'm assuming happened because you kind of said you you said it, right? You said it went from being a crusade to league to you know, whatever this tournament style aspect that it is now. Um so let me ask you something, because I think that that brings up something that's a bigger thing within the community, right? Do you think that, in your opinion, based on your experience with this, like playing a s a crusade is possible in that like local game store setting where you're bringing in additional people and things like that over weeks and weeks and weeks um to be able to do that without necessarily it being overshadowed by the competitive side of the game.

11th Edition: Balanced & Narrative

SPEAKER_00 14:06

Honestly, and and I'll connect this to a look ahead to an 11th edition. So the the tagline for 11th edition has been balanced and narrative. And I my answer to your question would be I like where they're going with 11th edition of balanced and narrative because I think historically has everyone treated they've treated it like it's this either-or of either you're playing narrative or you're playing competitively. And you know, so the the expectation is, well, if you're playing crusade, you're 100% narrative and you're you're not playing competitively and you don't care to win. And my experience with the crusade is very similar to the experience that we've had in the barn over the years, which is that yeah, we're playing casually, but everyone still shows up and is trying their hardest to win. And in some cases, the fact that you know it's a casual environment, or in this case, a crusade environment, and the crusade rules are much more loosey-goosey, and there's much more ability to deck stack. You know, it we had a a game I played the other day where we re-rolled for the mission, and the opposing player's like, uh, I've played this one before, it's not great for my army. Can we can we do another mission? I was like, sure, why not? And then we re-roll, and he's like, Yeah, okay, let's play this one. I've never played it before. And it's like god-awful for my army. And I was like, Well, can we re-roll? You know, and he's like, No, no, no, I really want to play this one. Like, oh god, all right, I'm not gonna be that guy. But yeah, it just it introduces all of these opportunities for you've used the term in the past, people to rule stop like you're not breaking the rules, but you're certainly bending them to give you a competitive advantage. And part of my experience with Crusade is I think the people who wrote Crusade assumed they were dealing with a 100% narrative player base. And I have yet to meet that player base, yeah. I mean, and that's not to say that all the time. It's not to say that there aren't people who want to play casually or that there aren't people who want to play narratively, but it's I don't think anyone plays this game and goes, I don't care if I win. I don't know, like I I don't need to compete, like I'm just here to tell a story. Like maybe that person exists, but I've never met them.

SPEAKER_02 16:32

I I do want to meet the person who plays like a horde mode type game or something, and you know, they're the horde. The horde's not supposed to necessarily win, if you will. Like that they're just supposed to be there to make the whole thing. But every time I've played horde mode with somebody, it turns into a a flat out, like, I'm gonna win, I'm gonna win type situation. And then especially if you're playing across multiple people, they then they start, you know, wanting to win individually on either side. So it's I I agree with you. I I think I think there's there's a place for it, right? I think there's a place for narrative play. But I think it's really, really, really hard when you talk about all the other things that we discuss on the podcast, like identifying with your faction, and like, you know, you know, what's you know, what's your Jenny, and all these other things that we've talked about in the past, right? It's really hard to shut off the fact that you just want your favorite toys, your favorite little models and characters on on the board to win. It's hard to do that. And and I guess it it becomes doubly hard when you have something like a league aspect to it, right? Where you're you're actually pitting, you know, different people with inside of the league against each other every week to see, you know, where the narrative goes next. It turns into little mini tournaments almost. I I can see that from an outsider's perspective.

SPEAKER_00 18:08

Yeah, and it's I have great empathy for the the guy who's running the league out of the LGS because he at first he tried to police all this stuff of like, you know, after a game, we'll sit down together. Every player's gonna go through their experience with me, and they're gonna tell me what upgrades they're getting. And you know, pure crusade rules, you're you're supposed to just roll anytime you want to upgrade your units or whatnot. And if it's a one or a two, you get this enhancement. If it's a three or a four, you get this other one. And you could almost see the point halfway through the league where he just let go of the rope because he was sick of people fighting him on that, because they, you know, to your point, we all care about the armies we choose. And and so people, well, but I I don't want to have to roll because I've already picked that I want this unit to get this enhancement because it fits this narrative that I've created for them, and it's gonna allow my army to do this other thing and to level up, and it fixes a hole in my army. And you can see a point where, and the poor guy's dealing with you know, there were 30 players in the league, so let's say even half of them are doing that. You can see the point where he just let go of the rope, he's like, you know what, guys, just you do you. Like, sure, whatever.

SPEAKER_02 19:22

Yeah. And I that's a shame too, because like when when a store owner goes out of their way to try and create an environment where you can have like a healthy community, right, behind this, and you kind of get stuck behind this whole like competitive edge aspect to it. Like it I've that that is that is a shame because I think I think your local store owner is doing really cool stuff for the community, and he's really like putting new ways of thinking about playing a game, keeping it fresh, keeping people coming in the store. Like, that's amazing. That's what this community needs more of. Um it's just it's just interesting to me that um, you know, as you continued through this kind of like process, like I've seen over the past, I don't know, what is it, like eight or nine weeks that you've been in this league. Um I I've seen this kind of like ebb and flow of like the excitement of of this process. And so to give away the other side of what we're gonna talk about tonight, and you kind of already went there a little bit, um, I I have not looked at 11th 11th edition on purpose. Um, I've seen a little bit of it because you just can't get away from like all the Reddit spies that are out there that are like, oh my god, this leak came out, or this thing happened, or I want to talk about all the things that were in the preview and blah blah blah blah. I personally I can't do that because then you know I get antsy about waiting, right? So I just don't look at it, right? But you came up with this idea, and you were like, hey, I've been noticing stuff through this crusade experience that's potentially um 10th edition type woes, but also where you think that there's making some adjustments and changes and some things that you're you're perceiving kind of on the horizon um from what you've seen and heard from 11th edition. And I think that that's that's pretty interesting if like you're taking this like micro environment, right, where you're you're seeing a lot of games and you're seeing them being played all kinds of different ways, so you're getting all the angles, and you're coming out of that with hey, I think I I kind of maybe sort of see a trend that might be coming into 11th. So I think it'd be really cool if one you shed me in on that, right? Let me know what it is that you're seeing. Um, but two, you're gonna get some real time reactions because if you're gonna talk about things that you think or no are changing in 11th, I haven't seen them yet. So I don't know. So you might get some real hot fuzz off the top. Because I have no idea what's coming. So all right, I'm handing it over to you. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Sure. So you I I guess just to close out the the crusade thing before we jump into the 11th. So quick recap of the experience. Because I I like you last week when you kind of launched into the you know, GW could do better at their rules. I don't like when I come across negative either. I'm just gonna end on it like it's been a super cool experience playing the Crusade. I also am not being sour about it because it's like I've lost a bunch of games. I I'm 5'1-1 in the Crusade League, and so think I've done pretty well, and I've had way more good games than bad games. Like, I've had one of the best games I've played in the past calendar year was in this Crusade League when I played against AdMec. That game was awesome. And the guy I was playing with was also awesome. So overwhelmingly positive experience, but it just like you said with Barnhammer, we you see this creeping, and I'll start with the whole narrative and balanced. That's the most ex exciting thing that I'm looking forward to in 11th edition, because I think they're finally acknowledging that it's not an either-or between narrative or balanced. We all want a balanced game that we can play competitively, and we all want it to feel somewhat narrative. And yeah, maybe there's sliding scales on how much you emphasize each one of those two, but it's not an either-or choice. And so I'm excited to see how they implement that because that's stated as a goal. I think it scratches an itch of something you've talked about in 10th of it's lost a lot of the the narrative feel and the fluff because they focus so hard on balance. And I experienced the other side with Crusade, where they focus so hard on trying to make the crusade feel narrative that it became wildly unbalanced, and that sucked the fun out of it too. So I'm really excited to see what they do with narrative and balance because I I like that they're acknowledging it's an and, not an or.

SPEAKER_02 24:26

Well, to me, it's a big part

10th Edition: Too Vanilla?

SPEAKER_02 24:28

of this, right? And and uh my opinion on 10th is it very much felt so focused on technical balance and the competitive play that it it did lose a little something. Not that it's not a good game, not complaining about it. It just it just kind of felt like I don't know, if it's gonna maybe a weird analogy, right? But like, do you remember in like grade school or high school when you would come into school and your teacher would be like, oh, it's a movie day, right? And you're like, Yes, like I am, I don't have to learn like I don't know, fractions or something stupid. Not stupid, fractions are really important, but I don't have to learn that crap today. I'm gonna watch, I don't know, The Lion King or some whatever Disney movie, right, that they're gonna play in the school. And then they turn on this thing and it's like a documentary from like 60 minutes, and it's just like, oh my god. Okay, well, it's a movie, it did the thing, but man, that wasn't that that just that man, it just missed something. It just did it wasn't fun. That's kind of how like in my brain, that's how sometimes I feel like the overswing of 10th for me went, right? It just felt like, yeah, this is cool, and they've done some really cool stuff, but could you make it like spicy and not like I don't know, vanilla? Like I it just to me, it just felt like a very vanilla addition. Um, and I don't know. It that's so I guess to wrap that all up, because I'm going off on a tangent here, but if they are looking to balance narrative along with the strategic and and competitive play, I think that that's that's really cool. I think it's really cool for them to come out and say that as that's what we're gonna focus on. And um I'm really excited about that. That that that makes me really excited about 11th.

SPEAKER_00 26:40

Yeah, it's it combines and I'm operating under the assumption that it is gonna take some time. They are stating a vision, they are stating a goal, it's not gonna be, you know, release new edition as written, perfectly balanced and wonderfully narrative. There's gonna be some swings back and forth where you, you know, some factions won't feel all that narrative and and you'll hear all about it online from their player base, and and other factions will feel super narrative, but might have way too many and thens and be OP busted. And it'll take a couple of data slates to to find the right balance between the two, but I love the fact that they're acknowledging it and they're trying to move towards those things. Because it it combines what have been so like my favorite part of 10th edition, especially towards the tail end, is by and large, it has been pretty balanced, and and you know, it seems like more often than not, player skill factors just as much into the game as the strength of the list and what faction you're playing. And one of the things I've noticed, you know, we talked last week, I did kind of a self-analysis of all my battle reports. It is very clear which armies I personally am more comfortable, more confident, and more skilled at playing, because even when they aren't the best in the meta, I still win consistently with them. And I think one of the things 10th has done really well is find that level of balance so that everything's close enough that, you know, obviously if you're playing at the top, top levels, that extra 0.1% matters. But there's a point where player skill matters more than list strength, assuming you know, you're not wildly at the top of the meta. And then the thing I've loved the most about um the Crusade League, like I mentioned the game against the admec guy, he had a really cool narrative admec list. And he he built it so it was themed around the Dune novels, and he'd paint the then they that matched how he painted all his units, and we when we rolled for the mission, we both completely ran with it, and then we picked who was attacker-defender to create a narrative story, and we embraced the crusade side of the name of it, and we had a blast playing together. So the having a combination of the both of them, I find very exciting.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

So I want to kind of clarify it a little bit too on where from my perspective, like where I think it missed something, because as you were talking, I'm I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, I'm like, well, what what was it that missed, Steve? What what do you think that that wasn't there? And as I'm thinking through it, right, we're getting detachments at a blistering pace right now, right? They're coming out with them left, right, center. We got Christmas grotmas thing coming out where they're sending all kinds of stuff and everybody gets excited, and then they're flat. They don't have anything that's like really tied to the core of where you're at right now with the army and and where things are going. And yeah, you get some and there's some lore aspects that are tied to it, which is really cool, but it it's almost like it's almost like um like they've over-diversified it a little bit so that you can't really attach to like that identity. Um, and so I don't know, I go back and forth. Like, I love that we're getting new stuff, that GW's taking it, and we're getting fresh stuff, but I think it's it's in that where it's like, yeah, I gave you five new detachments, but you know, four of them you'll never use, and we know that, and one of them's really cool. Um, like I think it's in that. That like I don't know, for from a 10th perspective. Where I think just getting something, uh man, I as I'm saying this, I'm literally listening to myself and going, dude, you're getting free stuff. Like, shut up. Like, you should not be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 31:08

I got you on this

11th Edition Detachment System: Excitement or Worry?

SPEAKER_00 31:09

one because I you're pivoting really well into the the first thing I was gonna bring up beyond just the the high level 11th vision statement, which is so detachments and the fact that you'll have detachments will have points, and you'll have the ability to combine potentially multiple detachments, and your what detachments you pick and how you build your list will determine what mission you play. Like it there's a lot in there, and I view it with a combination of excitement and worry. And what I mean by that, and you're hitting on a lot of it, is so like excitement is I would echo back what you just said, and I've seen this again in the the league that I play in. Of I think GW has released a ton of detachments, and there's a lot of pressure for the community for you know, more, more, more, more, more. My personal observation is I think they're watering down, like there's so many detachments that it's potentially watering down the the ecosystem of detachments. You know, there's so many there that nobody can is gonna play all of them for their faction. But more importantly, like it's to your point, I think it's pretty solved. Like the if I go back to my my Space Marine complaint throughout the edition, everyone just plays Gladius. Like that's just doesn't matter unless you're Blood Angels, every other flavor, and maybe Deathwatch, every other flavor of Marine just plays Gladius. And like that that stinks. That's not very narrative, that's not very fluffy, that's incredibly boring from a game feel perspective. And you know, it it's one of those like it's been a tough problem to solve because I I've made my feelings on it very clear of when we'll get people who play different flavors of Space Marines, like, oh, you know, this stinks, I can't play my Imperial fists. Like, well, you can, but it's just not optimal, and you don't like that.

SPEAKER_02 33:29

Right.

SPEAKER_00 33:30

And so my you know, one of the things that I'm excited about with what they're doing is, okay, so they're they're acknowledging that not all the detachments are created equal, and there should be attacks to play the more powerful ones to introduce some friction into the system so that hopefully people go diversify and play other ones and combine things to try and come up with interesting combos that they haven't tried yet to date. I also like it gives them another balance lever where if they want to mix up the meta even more and get people to go diversify, they can adjust the points on the detachments, and it'll give them a hey, I'm gonna stir the pot a little bit. Everyone's been playing these two detachments for Space Marines. I'm gonna up the points on those ones, and boop, you have to, you know, you can keep playing them, but they're gonna be weaker, or you got to go try something else. I like that aspect. My worry with the combination and the like you can build a custom detachment where you have two things that go together, is you're potentially introducing the opportunity for that much more and thens. And you're increasing the access to things that people can combine to come up with something that wasn't intended. And this is the problem I saw with Crusade when people would start pulling a bunch of enhancements and relics and battle traits and everything else from the Crusade book and combining it with the enhancements and detachment rules and everything else, as they could create these stacks of things that were just wildly overpowered and borderline, either oppressive or non-interactive. Like in, you know, I said I played a game against uh, you know, I was playing blood angels, I was playing my opponent, and every unit in his army that mattered had fights first. Like that's just a what do I do here if I'm the blood angel player?

SPEAKER_02 35:31

So as you're saying that, right, there's a bunch of things that are running through my head. And also, um, just to kind of give a shout out, cousin Josh is uh is is monitoring today in the background. So um but I think that um what I find interesting about that the the idea behind changing the way that detachments are used, right? You you you kind of hit on it, right? Like that there's like this tax aspect, right? Of if you're just gonna if you're just going to always use that same one, and I don't know if that's what it is. I honestly don't know, um, because I haven't read about it yet, but but the idea of trying to help to get folks using different detachments to kind of diversify the game, to to shape and and and add maybe some more narrative aspect to the game. Um yeah, I'm I'm really all behind that. Um, I think it's interesting. I from my perspective, it's something that you and I tend to do, right? Um, we tend to like pick little detachments and give them little names, um, you know, outside of just the you know what GW names them. Um, but you know, we we come up with different ways to play them and different different things that we want to do with those detachments, and it really enhances the experience. It does. Um, I mean, we we had you know the gauntlet that we sent cousin Josh through, right? Yep. Those were detachments that we were just trying to, you know, the those detachments fit, you know, kind of a little mini crusade and like things like that. And I know that everybody that is in the competitive space is gonna be like, well, we you know, we need the ones that are gonna, you know, give us the biggest advantage, and those are the ones we play because they're the ones that are meta, and we're gonna go to a tournament and that's what we're gonna win with. But I would push on to say that there's other aspects to the game and there's other people within the community that that also want those other things. And it's kind of really cool to see GW um kind of acknowledging that and and and you know making a statement that they're gonna they're going to work on balancing competitive and narrative.

SPEAKER_00 38:01

So spoiler alert, it's not just the tournament players that that operate that way of detachments. I played in a crusade league, everyone just played the detachments that the tournament players are playing. Like I never once saw the like what's the really fluffy pioneer detachment for Votan that has pretty terrible rules, but it's designed around like your your hearthkin units, your Yay girls, your your bikes and whatnot. I forget the name of it. It's like Prospect or Pioneers or something like that. They didn't see any of that. You know, people were playing what they hear about and what they see in the tournament. So it but it I'm with you of what I think is really cool is I think there's the opportunity with this. So they're basically doing a three-two-one point scale where you have three points to spend on detachments, and each detachment is gonna get a a value of three, two, or one. So when you're building your list, you can pick a three-point detachment, which is probably gonna be all of the ones that people are playing today, or you can combine three one-point detachments or a two and a one.

SPEAKER_02 39:16

And I know, I know how I'm gonna do this. I that that to me is really exciting. Like, yeah, I I've wanted something like this because uh so from my perspective, right? There are parts of every army that I play that I just don't click with. I it's you picked on one of them, right? The pioneers for me. Man, I want to love them, but I just don't. I don't know why. It's just they just don't they don't make me exciting. So if I could if I could have detachment use my detachments around those models so that I could still play, still be excited about the game, but maybe play around having to take those because they're auto-take or whatever reason that you have to, yeah, I'm gonna go try to find that, right? Um, I think that that's really, really cool. And so then from a narrative perspective, right, I can turn that those detachments into the game that I want to play, the game that I'm excited about.

SPEAKER_00 40:23

It's uh in general, I am very excited for it because I think it introduces the opportunity to create some really cool combo lists that have a much more narrative feel, and you won't just get the same boring. Oh, there's Eric with his Gladius Space Marines for the 17th time, because that's the obvious choice when you're playing Space Marines. But they the worried rider that comes with it is I also think the first year of 11th edition is gonna be full of whack-a-mole style balanced data slates where people are gonna find a whole bunch of combos that GW didn't realize were all that powerful when you combine three one-point detachments or a two-point or a one-point. And you're gonna go, we're probably gonna go through the first three or four data slates, are just gonna be whack-a-mole of something that popped up that wasn't intended. Everyone jumped on it, started playing it, it's OP busted, bang, stop doing that.

SPEAKER_02 41:25

And so you're you're saying I'm all for that. The nerfing Eye of Sauron is like ramping up right now for 11th.

SPEAKER_00 41:34

Oh, yeah, I think I think our no more and then and nerfing eye of Sauron episodes will age really well through the first 12 months of 11th edition. And I think that's gonna cause some feel bads with people because it's a new way to go. You talked about this last week. There's a lot of people who really enjoy finding those loopholes and those gray areas and the rules and exploiting them, and they're introducing yet another dimension where people can do that. And I bet you know, GW is shown through 10th edition, eventually they catch up and they get real good at nerfing that stuff.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

Yeah, that's interesting. All right, so that was so we beat this one up pretty good. Yep. So what else? So you had you you had a couple like aha moments you said um throughout this, which is why we wanted to obviously do this as a part of the podcast. What's what else you got?

11th Edition: Missions & Force Dispositions

SPEAKER_00 42:32

The fact that how you build your list and what detachment mix you choose will determine what primary mission you're playing, and it will be it potentially will be different than your opponent's primary mission. Like they're using something they call force dispositions, and then how you score primary points will be based off of what your combination of force disposition is against your opponent's force disposition. That sounds really cool to me because the number one fight in the Crusade League, and we've seen this a little bit in Barnhammer, is you roll the dice in Crusade, you roll the dice, you check the book, you see what mission it pointed to, or in our barn, you lay the cards out, someone pulls a card randomly out of the deck, you flip it over, you see what mission you're playing, and inevitably you get this weird game of chicken where one player's like, Oh, that doesn't work all that great for my army. I don't want to do this. Can we re- can we redraw?

SPEAKER_02 43:37

Yeah, 100%.

SPEAKER_00 43:39

And you know, that doesn't happen in a tournament because they publish a player pack ahead of time where they'll they'll announce all those things, or you just have to build your armies to play on all missions. But by the end of the Crusade League, this was five five minutes of discomfort at the start of every game where you know. You'd roll and look at the mission, and then we both read it. And my past couple of opponents made it abundantly clear they did not want to play the first mission that we rolled for. And they wanted to find a mission that was more favorable for their army. Whereas I think this is really cool that now they're setting it up of you can build your list with a mission in mind, and how your army list interacts with your opponents will determine what your mission is. So there's a level of you get some agency from the jump, but also you can't completely dope the choice so that it's optimal for you.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

So interesting. This is interesting, by the way. Super interesting. Um to me and typical of our two personalities. So when you read that to me, here's my initial reaction. So you're saying that I can make SEAL team six uh with a mission that is, you know, like an aquatic mission that would be, you know, warrant of the Navy versus having SEAL Team Six doing a mission that would be an Army Ranger mission or something along those lines, right? Like, and so to kind of that you know pick on that, right? So like if the detachment dictates my mission, then it's gonna feel like it's more geared towards me, right? But but my opponent's doing the same thing, so technically it's kind of balanced because my mission is my mission, their mission is their mission, and so now we're not doing this chicken dance, right, that we do of, you know, well, this is gonna be more slanted towards you. Do we want to do that? And blah, blah, blah, blah, and and so on and so forth. And I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 45:53

Yeah, it's so, and they haven't released the full details, so it we're going off the generalities, but so the five force dispositions they have are take and hold, disruption, purge the foe, priority assets, and reconnaissance. So, like things that we could do using your and my play style. I am much more of a purge the foe kind of player than you, and you are much more of a take and hold type of player than me. We're not going to have that awkwardness anymore when you and I play, where you're playing Votan, where literally your army rule tells you, hey, target things that stand on objectives and go stand on objectives yourself. Right. And my Emperor's Children, which literally tells me never stop moving. Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, keep killing things, keep moving. So now I can play Purge the Foe and you can play Take and Hold, and the dynamic between the two will create this unique interaction. And we you know, we gotta see the details of all of it, but it that just sounds phenomenally cool to me.

SPEAKER_02 47:01

But I just got excited about that game because thinking through that, right? And and to be honest with your current state, 10th edition today. Actually, cousin Josh and I had this conversation earlier today. From a Votan perspective, I have no idea what to do with your Emperor's children. It's very hard for me because you are on top of me right away. And you are quickly, you like move through, burn everything as you go, like salt the fields or whatever they used to do back in like Rome. And like, that's what they do. They go through the board and take everything out on the way, right? Not what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to get that big thing on that target, go focus my fire, take it off of that objective. Oh, now I'm gonna move on to that objective and I'm gonna stand there and shoot at everything coming into me. Well, you're already in my back back wall, right? You're you're already there, right? So so that's how it happens in 10th. But what you just described and and why I'm getting a little animated on this side, um, is okay, so now because the objectives are based off of what or my mission is based off of what I I'm supposed to do, even if my opponent is counter to that, you know, I could I could potentially kite you around. It pushes me to to change maybe the way that I would do those things. And and I know that I could do that today, but the the incentives aren't there because the missions don't necessarily also line up with that today, if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

Yeah. Well it and then the other thing that I think is gonna be very, very interesting, and I promise we're not just going back and plugging all of our own episodes. It's just it's funny how a lot of the stuff we talk about, like, you know, seems to apply here. So my biggest takeaway from this, you know, it's gonna take some time for them to balance. So there's gonna be some obvious meta choices. There's gonna be, and I'm gonna make all this up, but like the mathematical optimal way to play this is to play a disruption army against a take and hold army because then you're guaranteed X, Y, and Z. Well, we talked last week about you know, macro strategy mistakes, and we talked about in the past, you know, play styles. What if I'm a bad disruption player? And that's the meta choice.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:33

It's gonna add this other wrinkle of, well, now not only do you have armies that play different styles and armies that are at different power levels in the men at any given point in time, but you're gonna have interactions between these five different force dispositions that are balanced differently. And it's gonna create this real unique thing about well, what if the army that I'm most comfortable playing and the force disposition that matches how I feel most comfortable and confident playing this game isn't the meta choice anymore, even if my army is power-wise near the top. And I think that, I mean, there's gonna be some feel bads that come from that, and you'll we'll see a lot of discussion of that online, but I think that's a really cool level of friction that potentially could be introduced into the game to to keep it from stagnating so quickly and just becoming a solved thing.

SPEAKER_02 50:38

I'm interested to see what a meta does look like in the beginning and throughout 11th, right? Because to me, to me, today the meta is a little more binary, it's a little more kind of black and white. You do this and you're gonna expect to get X, right? Um But see the it's what we just went through uh about you know these forced dispositions, it it almost is like begging people to say, hey, when you see the meta, throw a wrench in it. Because it's gonna give you it's gonna give you something that's not seen and it's okay, and you have a way of doing that now. Whereas like before, you know, I know that in in Barnhammer, and I know that in some of the things that we've done outside of Barnhammer, like you feel obligated, you have to play a certain way. I, you know, I've had this conversation with you in the past about like you just feel like you have to play it the meta way. We did we are plugging a lot of our previous episodes tonight, but it's it's I guess it's because we're also comparing them against 11th, which is kind of cool. You know, we didn't we did a whole episode about building a list that wasn't the meta, and you know, how we could play it and and get it to play in a fun way. And that type of an attitude, that type of an interaction sounds to me like what they're trying to throw into this this uh you know new edition. So yeah, it's kind of cool.

11th Edition: Terrain Layout Overhaul

SPEAKER_00 52:17

So it strikes me, and I'll I'll pivot to the next thing I'm excited about, which is one of your favorite subjects, which is terrain and the mission layout or the board layouts, is so I think in 10th edition, one of the things that they tried to do is they tried to balance the game through the primary missions and through having eight recommended board layouts with different deployment methods. And uh ultimately my observation through playing a lot of 10th edition is certain boards and certain missions favor different types of armies, and and it wasn't 100% equal, and some boards and some terrain layouts just never got played, and they became very boring because they were all built around you're playing with ruins and they're all L-shaped. Going into 11th, what it looks like is they're they're moving down. So, one, they will have a standard terrain pack that is smaller but offers flexibility for more things than just L-shaped ruins. I I need to go deeper on the specifics of how the terrain, you know, into specific rules are going to work, and you know, what's line of slight blocking and the benefit of cover. Sounds like it's being flipped to be a minus one to ballistic skill instead of you know, add one to save if you get benefit of cover. But the bigger takeaway I have is it sounds like they are simplifying the layouts down to a couple of layouts, they're simplifying the terrain and giving you the flexibility to add in more diverse types of terrain, and they're adding in the they're trying to do the balance through points of the armies, rules of the armies, points and rules of the detachments, and then the interaction of the different force dispositions. And that gives them a solid, like five levers that they can pull at any given point of time at any balanced data slate to mix it up if the the meta's becoming stagnant or solved or not fun. And so they're trying to control it. Seems like they're trying to control balance that way, instead of you know waiting a full year and then you release a new mission deck, and we'll try and make some tweaks to secondaries and we'll offer a new layout. So it just I don't know. It strikes me of my prelim look, a lot of the boards look more universally fair to whatever type of army you bring. And one of the other things I'm really excited about going back to the crusade is so outside of the five minutes of awkwardness when you were determining what mission you were gonna play, you want to know what the next big fight for all the crusade games was?

SPEAKER_02 55:02

How balanced the how balanced the terrain was for each person. Yeah, how are we gonna lay out the terrain? 100%. It's one of my biggest, it's one of my biggest frustrations right now with the game. Because I you know, and I think we've talked about this in the past. Like sometimes I feel like depending on how the terrain's laid out, I'm gonna either do really well or I'm gonna either do really bad. There's no middle ground, there is no no yin and yang. It is just, you know, one and zero. And so I really did try hard, knowing that we were gonna kind of do this to not read about 11th and to not like do my research so that you guys are getting, you know, straight reactions. But unfortunately, with the nature of social media today and all the ways that you can see things, I keep getting these stinking ads for oh, get our new terrain packs for flexible deployment across new 11th edition. So make sure that you can get this terrain that's allowing you to adapt to whatever. So I knew that there were gonna be new terrain rules, which got me excited. Um because I I've harped on this in the past. I I think that one of the things that doesn't get looked at enough in in 40k is the terrain, the map layout. You know, I think you got extensive map layout, you know, most of them are tournament-based map layout. But they're again, I felt like it lost something, right? It lost some of the creativity and the ways that you can see some of the more narrative play, narrative play, you know, use the terrain. Um you you had to go away from that because you you had to almost stand you well, you did, you had to standardize it so that it could become something that you didn't have to balance against all the time. And so it sounds to me like they're they're moving into a a different approach to that. And I don't know, it's kind of exciting.

SPEAKER_00 57:10

I think it's still gonna be like that they still have the terrain footprints. It I so I think there's still gonna be an element of it's standardized, it's gonna feel you know, it's not like we're gonna go in there and set up four-story superstructures that people have to move through, and but it's not just well, I mean, we could, but so again, my biggest experience with Crusade, because Crusade, there's nothing in the rules about terrain. In fact, they the terrain layouts aren't part of the core rules, they are part of the tournament companion mission packs that go along with playing competitively. And so what we found, you know, so terrain is just a you know, put whatever you think is on the board to fit the narrative you're trying to tell. And that resulted in a well, the narrative I want to tell is that my army wins, so I'm gonna try and lay out the terrain to best suit my army. Right. Right, of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 58:14

I so from a terrain perspective, I I don't know. Uh over the course of 10th, I felt like I got bored. I got bored with seeing the same layouts all the time, the same buildings, the same things, and and to that too, like terrain's expensive and we don't have a ton of different ones. Um, so you know, but it just I don't know, it just I it just felt like it lost something versus what what we've seen in the past. And yeah.

SPEAKER_00 58:50

I like I like that they are acknowledging that we need a standardized set of terrain that isn't just buildings. I like that it looks like they are simplifying it and trying to create balanced boards that work equally well for melee and shooting armies. And I like that they are trying to add in the complexity and the narrative feel and the diversity via the interactions of the different lists and detachments against each other. I think that that like to me that sounds insanely cool. It's I see the opportunities for it to be abused, but I think that sounds insanely cool.

SPEAKER_02 59:35

So, all right, hold on. One more slip up where I do know something, right? So well, maybe I don't know. Um so what's up with the the objective markers? What's the change that everybody's up in arms about these objective markers?

SPEAKER_00 59:51

So the terrain is gonna be the objective markers. There's no more random circles out in the middle of the battlefield. So it's like Age of Sigmar style thing where you're interacting with the terrain, then I mean you've played more AOS than I have, but the the terrain layouts that they show, they just flag. So they basically have a bunch of a lot of the terrain has gotten smaller, and then they have five big pieces of terrain that would go where the objective markers are, and the objectives are in the middle of that terrain.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:23

Ah, so so yeah, so like so not to blend AOS into here, but like in AOS, especially in like Spearhead, right? So like you could you could be within engagement range of that terrain, right? With within certain distance, and then you get you know specific interactions with that. Um so it sounds to me like maybe they are leaning more towards that, but with a 40k flare, so like the objectives inside of the terrain become how you interact with it, like to like burn one or something like that, or you know, whatever you're trying to do. Um that's that's interesting. Okay, so I didn't because I've been trying to put myself in like in a in a soundproof room on 11th edition. Um I didn't really know what the hoopla was about, but man, people were having a moment about the fact that objective markers weren't gonna be there anymore or something, and I was like, okay, like what they still have to you still have to be able to score primary and secondary. So well, you know, they'll come up with a way to do it somehow.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:31

They're just making them a part of the terrain.

Wrap Up and Call for Transparency

SPEAKER_00 1:01:33

Like it, my my biggest takeaway, and we're approaching kind of an hour in, so I'll go into wrap-up mode. My biggest takeaway from everything I've seen, and it's why I'm very, very excited for 11th edition, because I it it addresses one of the things we've seen in Barnhammer. I s I've started to see it in spades in the Crusade League, is and I think I see the opportunities for it in in 11th with how they're talking about the detachment mixing and everything else, but it I'm hopeful that they'll work their way through it. Is I think there's this constant tug of war that goes on around optimizing, where well, if I'm playing optimally, this is going to be a completely uninteractive game for you. Because I've already solved it. And I'm just going through the motions and I have the answers to the test before you even ask the question. And one of the things that I really like about the bones that it looks like they're putting in place is I think they're really trying to focus on now. This is a two-player game. You will interact with your opponent.

unknown 1:02:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:49

You don't just get to show up and they're a non-player character in your game of 40k. Like, you know, one of the other changes that it sounds like, and we don't have time to go deep with it, and I need to learn more before I earn a I form an opinion on it, is it sounds like there's some level rule of if you're infantry and you're more than 15 inches away from a big scary gun and you haven't activated your unit yet, you don't get to get shot. So the ability for someone to stand on one side of the board and just ironstorm you off the board in one range shooting activation potentially goes away. They're trying to force people to know you need to get into the midfield, you need to go interact with your opponent. This is going to be a back and forth, you know, type of game. I think that's really cool. You know, they've made some AOS style changes to the charge phase of you no longer declare your target, you roll your dice, you see what you can then go tag, and then you pick your target. Yep. So potentially less opportunities for uh well, I really want to go and hit that thing that's nine inches away, but I don't want to fail a charge and just be left here because then I'll get blown up next turn. So it it seems like there's a focus of trying to get the two players to interact with each other more, and I love the fact that they're doing it by also looking at how the two players' rules interact with each other. I love how they're thinking about the the terrain rules and some of the shooting phase and fight phase rules as it relates to you know getting the two players to interact with each other, and so I I'm I'm very excited for it because my my biggest complaint finishing the crusade is I would say that the back half of the crusade, because it was a league and everyone started playing incredibly competitively, is everyone just built a bunch of lists that for certain enemies on certain missions they became completely uninteractive. And it just it wasn't any fun to play against. And the fact that they had 15 to 17, you know, both players had 1500, 17, 50 points of units they could draw upon, you could stack deck stack your way into the perfect non-interactable I win this game automatically type of list. And and so I think it's cool that it it feels like GW is trying to force more. Nope, this is a two-player game, you will interact with your opponent, and we're gonna give you both a fighting chance to win the game if you're good enough.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:39

I I I love it. Also, as we were describing some of the new things, uh someone please go check on your local Tau player.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

Because Alright, I'm gonna quote StatCheck here because, like, yes, but then the other thing is the Metaway to play Tau right now is Mont Ka. Yeah. Which everything has advance and shoot. And so the running joke they had was, you know, because someone made that joke, oh, you know, they released the the new range shooting and terrain interactions and everything. Someone go check on your local Tau player. And then one of the guys, one of the hosts was like, I think they're fine because I've been playing a lot recently, and I have yet to have a Tau player shoot me from outside of 15 inches because they all advance and shoot, so they're all within 12 inches anyways before they kill me.

SPEAKER_02 1:06:33

Yeah, well, uh, Eldar advance and shoot too, and they have bright lances that sit across the board and delete things. So good luck with that. The the Hecaton has some of the biggest movement in my entire army, but like the rail gun's not really gonna do uh I listen, I I'm for it. I'm just saying that some town players, like cousin Brad, want to sit on the other side of the board and just shoot fish in a barrel. So, well, not fish.

SPEAKER_00 1:07:08

You're asking a melee player to feel bad for the ranged shooting specialist because they can't leaf blower me off the board before I get a chance to interact with them. It's not gonna happen.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:23

There's two sides to that coin, but that's gonna take us way past our allotted time period. So, my biggest takeaway from this is one, I think it's really cool that the experience that you went through with the crusade and kind of the league kind of led you to having some really interesting thoughts that you know you're seeing like good trends that are coming out of where we think 11th is going. I think that's really cool. One, I can go read about 11th now. We've done this episode. I can feel like I I I mean you this this was my reaction. I am reacting in real time. Of it sounds cool, it sounds like they're making some really neat things, and I'm excited about it. I'm I'm really excited about 11th now, and I was kind of lukewarm on it because I'm just starting to like feel like I'm got the grasp of 10th. Um, and 11th is coming, right? But um, I don't know. I I I'm I think I'm I'm pretty optimistic about this. I'm pretty excited to see what's happening, especially since they're gonna fix terrain.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:34

I do have some bad news for you though, Steve.

SPEAKER_02 1:08:37

No, man, I'm on a high note, we're at our time.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:40

Nope, nope, I have some bad news, and then we'll end on a high note. The bad news is to play the way that you articulate when I was talking about the detachment mixing, to play the way that you said you want to play, as either a two-plus uh two-point detachment and a one-point detachment, or three one-point detachments, you are gonna have to memorize either twice as many or three times as many rules as you do today.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:09

Yeah, but there's things that make that a little bit better today. I'll I'll be honest. Memorizing the rules thing, um, the apps help so much, in my opinion. So I'm okay with that.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:22

Alright.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:23

Just have some have some have some some grace with me. Obviously, I'm gonna have to learn two detachments, right? Which is fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:31

The other one ended, you know, public service announcement. This is a soapbox I will die on. You're also gonna have to be two to three times more transparent with your opponent because you could dip into two to three times more barrel of tricks. And that's the other thing I observed in my crusade league is you know, I would play against someone, they would walk, they would be happy to walk me through everything that's in their codecs as far as core rules and whatnot. And then I'd go to do something, they'd be like, Oh, I've got this special crusade relic thing that I forgot to tell you about, and it does this other thing that just hard counters what you were trying to do. And I I think that you know, the the soapbox I'll die on is transparency is gonna be as important, if not more important, than 11th edition, because people, my hope is people are dipping into way more detachments than we see today. And with the amount of detachments that are out there, it's gonna be very difficult to expect your opponent to completely understand that many potential combinations of rules.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:40

So I think Uncle Ben said it best. With great power comes great responsibility. And I think I think as we go through this, just I implore everybody remembers that. That everybody's learning new stuff, and you know, just don't be a dink.

SPEAKER_00 1:10:59

I'm just waiting for you to say that. Just yeah, just don't be a dink. Just don't be a dink. You want to know what I am most excited about for 11th edition? Yeah. The Emperor's Children.

SPEAKER_02 1:11:13

This is not going to be our end tag line. This is two weeks in a row. I'm cutting it now. No, stop it. Uh all right. Have a great night, everyone. Enjoy. We'll talk to you next week.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:32

Take care, everyone.