Friday, July 27, 2012

Why I am opposed to Forgeworld in tournaments

I have gotten some flack about my opposition to forgeworld and a lot of people wanted to know why. Well in a random and poorly written manner, the reasons why are these:


Here is a barrier to some people playing forgeworld. I know that this is one of the reasons why I don’t play with any. Don’t get me wrong, I am not poor and I own a ton of forgeworld dreads, land raider/rhino doors, and even 3 contemptor dreads. So why am I priced out of forgeworld especially considering how many armies I own, and after I just paid $75 for a rulebook? The reason why is that I will use the rule book many, many times over these next 5 years, and those FW doors I will use once or twice a month for many years to come. I have had my Thousand Sons FW Dreadnought for about 8+ years and I have gotten a lot of use out of him (and he is starting to show it).

Now let’s say that I wanted to add eldar hornets (think better vypers with 2 heavy weapons) to my army. They will cost me over $300+ to buy 6 or $150+ to buy 3. The problem I have now is it that I would only be able to use them once or twice a year in the events that allow forgeworld models/rules and even then only if I want to play eldar at each of these events. So I will not be getting much use out of my investment compared to the other armies I own.

Now there are also a lot of players that are less well off than I am. I hear the argument that the GW hobby is expensive and you should just expect to pay a lot of money to play the game. Well I question just how expensive the hobby is. There are a lot of FLGS that have a bazaars at their stores where people sell their unwanted models. You can pick up a lot of deals there for very cheap minis. You also have barter town and swap shops at some warhammer forums where you can horsetrade for models. Good luck doing that, or finding any Forgeworld for sale at a reasonable price. If you go on E-bay you can pick up ork and space marine units for pretty cheap not only because they come from the Assault on Black Reach box set, but because there are a ton of their models for sale. On the other hand forgeworld is still very expensive on e-bay and a lot of units closely rival their retail price. That is the wonders of economics and supply and demand at work. So if you are a student or anyone on a budget you would be hard pressed to add any forgeworld to your existing army.


Most people have no idea what anything in the forgeworld books even do. I do not own any Forgeworld books and I do not want to pay $50+ for each book (and piracy of them is not a reasonable option). I own every codex, and I know just about what every unit/army can do, not only by reading there rules, but by constantly playing against every army. I am still reading the 6th edition rulebook and the FAQs and trying to figure out how they all interact with the codexes and now you want to be familiar with 10 (or how many books there are out there) of huge books filled with a ton of equipment?

Also I question my opponents rule knowledge of his units. I play a lot of armies and I know a lot of codexes very well. I often times know my opponents codex far better than they do, so I know when they are making mistakes. Very often they misinterpret a rule, or forget some important fact all of the time. [Note: If you are looking for a good example of this look at the final game #7 of Wargames Con on Ustream. Ben Mohle had to constantly correct his opponent on all kinds of rules and wargear etc] How can I correct my opponents mistakes when I (and most people) have no idea how any of the forgeworld models/units even work? What if my opponent has an unfavorable ruling in the forgeworld FAQ and then he forgets to mention it or bring a copy of the FAQs then how would I ever know?


Since a lot of people don’t know what forgeworld units can do, where do you learn? Sometime right before a timed tournament game seems like a very bad answer. Either your opponent is going to be telling you half remembered rules, or you are reading them out the forgeworld book right before a game under a time pressure is not going to end well. How long does it take you to understand some of the rules of these very convoluted units (Hades breaching drill, cassius assault ram) before a game? I have played with forgeworld before as part of the adepticon team tournament and there have been many times where they have even read the rules, and then when they have seen the model in action they are all shocked because they had no idea how devastating they can be. So how much time does it take to really understand the different forgeworld rules and get familiar with their rules? The funny thing is that this is the worst time to throw forgeworld in to the mix because everyone is going to be flipping through the 6th edition rulebook while they play to figure out rules, and forgeworld is going to slow down play even more. People who are playing forgeworld have to juggle knowing 6th edition, the 40k FAQs as well as Forgeoworld and their FAQs and do it in a timely manner?

Here is an example for you that happened last month at Wargames Con’s team tournament:

From Wolf 11x

“Come to think of it, I wish I had played an easy 3rd round opponent (with 20ish points instead of 34). Would have meant we wouldn't have faced some Hades Drill whatever-the-hell bull ! I will say we still beat them 15-0 despite having no idea what their units did (and never being shown actual rules). ”

From skank911

That Hades drill team was me, and y'all never asked to see the rules, I had offered to show the book.

From Wolf 11x

When I asked, "What do this do?" I was expecting you to fully explain it to me in good faith. Saying "It's like a Mawloc" was very misleading, whether intentional or not. To be fair, we would have spread out more if we knew what they did, but the game would have gone the same.

Expect to see a lot of that.


Everyone says that the codexes were pretty balanced in 5th edition with the FAQs updated the older codexes with the new equipments creating balance and now 6th edition adding allies to make up for some armies shortcomings. Now with the addition of forgeworld how can anyone know what would happen to balance without playing every single unit and model in all of the forgeworld books? GW has a hard time balancing there codexes and there are always units that are must haves in each list (ie. psybolt dreadnaughts) and there are going to be a lot of overpowered units in the forgeworld books, Since it human nature to always take the overpowered units and none of the crappy units in the book you will see all of the broken units. With allies and everything else how can you say that there are not a lot of combos out there that someone can come up with that are nearly unbeatable? Remember when the BoLS crew brought Reaver titans to Adepticon’s Gladiator tournament? They dominated that event because they thought of something that the TOs didn’t. I am worried that there will be abusive units and combinations that no one will even think of and then they will win because of it. Remember the nob biker craze of early 5th edition when they dominated tournaments? That was an example of an army that came out of nowhere, that no one had thought of before but the new rules made it a dominating build that no one had an answer for. Now they are not just talking about adding the few units in the Imperial Armor Apocalypse book, but they want to add everything and there is no way that will be balanced. No I do not know if that is true or not, but my guess is that it is. Why add new levels of complexity when you do not have to? It is not like 6th edition is so old and tired that you need to add some spice to make it interesting.

I would really like to hear what a lot of top players whose opinions that I respect think about having forgeworld added to GTs.


  1. I fully agree with everything you have said.

    People keep saying that now is the time to add forgeworld; I firmy believe the start of a new edition is the worst time possible.

    If they did allow forgeworld what is your thoughts on counts as models to represent forgeworld units?

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