Competitive 40K: The OP Elephant in the Room
40K has a OP codex problem, and here’s why people think something needs to be done – plus a couple of solutions.
There is a lot going on in the competitive community. If you play in the ITC system, they are currently revising their missions. If you have a chance you should give them a try and give some feedback. People are gearing up for the upcoming tournaments at Adepticon and waiting to see what the Spring FAQ will give us. One of the common issues in all this is how to deal with an overpowered (OP) codex, or supplements in this case. There have been a couple of suggestions on how to fix this until Games Workshop fixes it. For this week we will look at why people feel that something needs to be done and a couple of the ideas being floated around.
Look Out Below!
If you haven’t noticed, the Space Marine codex has made a splash on the competitive scene. More importantly, the Space Marine supplements have made a bigger splash. Iron Hands is the one everyone is talking about as they seem to be coming out on top at many grand tournaments. Other supplements you see are Raven guard, Imperial Fists, and White Scars. Although not as dominating as Iron Hands, they are still extremely strong and make good showing in tournament they are a part of. This has caused an issue in attendance at small and mid-sized grand tournaments. Before the supplements were released you would generally see a 10-15% attendance drop between ticket sales and actual attendance. A few weeks after the release of the first supplements, we are now seeing a larger drop of 25-30% in attendance and this can greatly affect some tournaments that had grown a lot since 8th edition. Even the Las Vegas Open had about a 30% drop between ticket sales and actual attendance. As a result, many tournament organizers are looking into a couple of options to help keep, or grow, attendance to their events.
Forge World – Solution or Red Herring?
One solution is to ban Forgeworld entirely as most of the successful lists utilize Foreworld models. This is a full ban, so would basically include all of the Forgeworld Index books. At first glance, this seems like a viable idea. As mentioned, most of the issues with powerful units seem to be when combined with Forgeworld units. So if we remove that option, then there shouldn’t be an issue anymore since the problem units are gone. Unfortunately it doesn’t work like that. Sure there are some units from the Forgeworld books that are a bit undercosted or overpowered but they aren’t the issue. By removing the books all you have done is shift the focus from Forgeworld units to units from the codex. In some cases you won’t see any difference because it is the rules from the supplements themselves that are the problem and you simply need to replace the banned unit with a new one. The other reason is that the supplement books are so versatile and varied that is the problem with one army list is solved, players will simply switch to a different type of army build. In short, all this does is shift the problem and doesn’t really solve the problem.
Supplementals May Be the Real Problem
The other option is to ban the supplemental books altogether. Many feel that the main codex was a balanced book that, although strong, was not overpowering. It was wasn’t until the supplements that things got out of hand. There is a very strong case for the banning of the books as many people feel that if the books were banned then players would start attending events and playing again. I have read and heard many players say that they plan to stop playing until the supplements are fixed. At the same time, there was a recent poll that show that a majority of players would not attend a tournament if the supplements were banned by the organizer. It is about a 2 to 1 margin at this point. the other issue with this solution is that it doesn’t feel like a true tournament in that not all the armies were allowed. Sure a Sisters of battle army may win a grand tournament but was the army, or player, really that good if there were no Space Marines allowed to test against. I know it can be frustrated to play against the supplements but to really gauge the health of the game on a larger scale you really need all the armies involved. Hopefully Games Workshop sees how the books are affecting their customers and adjust accordingly.
~That’s all for this week. I hope you enjoyed the article and be sure to let us know how you would fix the attendance issue in the comments below!
