Goatboy’s Warhammer 40K: It’s Time For ‘Battle Ready’ Minimum Standards
Goatboy here. The big news is the Warhammer 40K competitive scene embracing Battle Ready and Player Behavior standards. It’s about time!
News out of the competitive scene is one of the bigger players in the tournament organizers, Frontline Gaming officially commenting on Battle Ready and being a Decent Player at the same time. This is a pretty big thing as both are parts of the game proper now but in a lot of ways they have been ignored in the past.
Thoughts On Battle Ready Standards
I think it’s a good thing to really see enforcement of these two game aspects, with mechanisms that have teeth to them. I don’t know about you, but going to an event, spending a good chunk of money, and then facing cobbled together “armies” that don’t look like they should have 10 points added to each game is frustrating.
Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t think everyone should have a professionally painted army. I just want your army to have some minimum standard of effort behind it, even if it is the current flavor of the month. It feels like this lack of effort is one of the bigger frustrating things out there and something that I am kind of tired of from event to event. It feels like if you are a player that confronts someone with a non battle ready army and try to say: “you don’t get those 10 points”, you get put in the position of not being cool – which is exactly backwards.
But this has been a part of the game ever since we’ve started having locked GW missions. This entire aspect is baked into the rules and it isn’t something you can wobbly model you way out of. It isn’t a “house rule” that can be thrown to the side. the minimum painting requirements are really something that serves as a mechanism to distinguish between those who just want to play – painted or not – and those who want to compete in the current rules of the game, with all the painted bells and whistles.
It gets annoying to make players feel bad that they have to call someone out that not all their army is painted – because really – that’s the rules. If you don’t have your army fully painted, then you should expect to not have those points per round. There isn’t a way out of it, and playing that way is disrespectful to those opponents that took some time, effort, or paid someone to have their army look ready.
Some of the comments were bothersome enough for me to write about it. I am all for giving points if you put in effort with your army. I know people all can’t paint efficiently, have time to paint, or the money to pay someone. It is life and effort matters in my opinion. I just want to see those minimal standards enforced.
Good Sportsmanship Matters Too
Beyond all of that the other big hit is of course the thought to enforce Values of Play during events. This means going after bad actors who are causing bad game environments with rules misplays, army misplays, and just human interaction misplays. I am happy to see it and while the card system does do work it, needs to be enforced more. Players need to understand that the game is two people playing – not one person trying to pull the shirt over the other and get a cheap shot in.
What does this mean for most players? Nothing at all. Most players come with painted armies. Most players are not complete tools on the tabletop. I have really only had one bad game in 10+ years of playing and it wasn’t bad because of the player necessarily. Most of the time, I can help make the game better just by being well – a nice player here to have fun.
Is this needed to be stated as hard as before? Do we want to see a better system of paint judging before the game to basically say you get 10 points per round versus not from a Judge instead of your opponent? Is there a method to help make this easier for events, players, and those just wanting to throw dice?
What do y’all think about painting and good sportsmanship enforcement?
