Gav Thorpe's CSM reaction

Link to Gav thorpes reaction to all the criticism he getting for his CSM codex.

I found this through a link on a different web-site. After reading a lot of the reactionary posts, I must admit I feel bad for the guy. Personally, I have never been one to prescribe to various extremist views of revisions being 'game breaking'. Rules change with time. If they don't, the game in question stagnates and dies. I think some of the people calling for his proverbial blood (or maybe even literal blood, in the case of the Khornate fanatics) may need to take a step back and chill just a bit. Personally, I don't mind the look of the CSM codex. I don't find anything in it particularly weak, and I can definitely see numerous options for customization in the core list. Anything else is fluff and color schemes.

However, maybe my opinion would change if I had been doing 40k for ages and ages. Different perspective would likely yield a different reaction.

This was my fav response....

I’ll keep my commentary simple:

Playtest your Codex: Playtesting means you try to BREAK your design — you find ways the rules can be misused or misunderstood. The Design Studio suffers from a blatant, sometimes crippling case of groupthink. Get some outside playtesters. Vicious nasty ones, munchkins and minmaxers of the worst sort. Sign them up with the most draconian confidentiality agreements you can. They will let you know what’s wrong with the codex from how they abuse the rules.

Get an Editor: They exist for a reason. Repeat after me: a spellchecker is not an editor. Say that a thousand times — it will be your punishment for Codex: Blood Angels.


...I think Gav Thorpe has always been poor at his job. He was in charge of all things Fantasy for a while and admitted that he not only didn't play Fantasy, but that he didn't like the game as much now as he used to. Nice. His Dwarf army book wasn't that bad for the times though.

Anyway, the dude sucks. Or at least he did suck in his capacity for contirbuting to the GW legacy in making products that were fun enough to incite the imagination and balanced enough to keep the screaming from the masses to a dull minimum.

My fav Gav Thorpe moment was when Eric Miller from town here had a kind of BS (my opinion anyway) item combo for Fantasy. He fired of a queery that got answered by non other then the Thorpinator himself and the answer was nothing sort of bizarre. When Eric explained what he intended to do with the combo, even sort fo hinting that the combo was super broken, Gav's response was "WHOAH! Good one! Yeah, totally go and do that, man!"

Terran wrote:However, maybe my opinion would change if I had been doing 40k for ages and ages. Different perspective would likely yield a different reaction.

Even if you haven't been playing for ages, Gav had been part of the Studio for a long, long time. He knew the score. Even in his post he mentions that he knows that 90% of the players out there are more of the tourny mindset ( I think that's what he said) but yet he admits that he wanted to gear things towards less of the tourny mindset. So the other 10% was his target audience.

I know less than nothing about the merits of any 40k specific stuff. I don't even know why I post about this stuff. But I do know that Gav produce crap after crap on the fantasy end of things. If he really, really wanted to break the hard and fast mindset of GW gamers then why do it on specific army books? Why bring your special brand of parameters to a portion of your demographic and let the other army books stay focused on the other 90% more competitive players?

When he ran all things fantasy I didn't see any of this sort of kinder and softer philosophy applied to the gaming univers in general. I didn't see anything other than battle reports in WD consisting of a stupid IG dude shooting spore mines by himself for about a year actually. I am not a fan of his. Though I hate Paul Sawyer more.

Scott stop talking about fantasy on the 40k site.

I like the CSM book. it's not just because i play it either. There are obviously a few things that are a little powerful for their points cost, but overal i like the feel. I am of the themed/fluffy style of army builder so the idea that the codex is open to people to govern themselves in honesty fits me more than someone like Robyn, Cam, etc. who will take the 2 princes and great daemon.

An all shooty Tsons list is still pretty competitive even without a prince or any daemons. (used one last night to decent effect)

But those people who can't be honest and have to have a uber cheese list get punished in tournies by having a crap comp score and no one enjoys playing them. so games playing a more themed/fluffy army will get you a better comp score, and can still win you the games.

Veyure wrote:
An all shooty Tsons list is still pretty competitive even without a prince or any daemons. (used one last night to decent effect)

I'm not sure if a cheesy tie is 'decent effect' lol.

Personally I like the codex, I think the black legion mixing and matching zerkers and t'sons. However I do miss the demons that the chaos codex used to have and I originally got chaos to play a Word Bearers army, however the new codex just came out when I got into 40k and the Word bearers are gone.

Overall I'd say leave the guy alone, the codex is fine, the true crime is the guy that wrote the demons codex, shoot that guy. (not sure who that was) I mean c'mon, an entire codex of demons, when there's already a DEMONhunters codex and almost all the special advantages against demons that demonhunters get don't apply to the demon codex, it's like they just asked some guy who never played 40k just picked up a pen and a roll of toilet paper and got busy.

I agree with Greg (whaaaat? i no hey?!). I do like the new dex, purely from a modelling perspective, than a gaming perspective. If I'm playing slaanesh, I can model slaanesh marines with huge shields as plague marines, and slaanesh marines in a spartan 300 gettup as berserkers, that screams cool to me, and the rule of cool does rule this game.

To Tom= I partly agree about the Daemon dex, but more for the fluff. All the fluff is just daemons winning big time, and how everybody else is doomed, its just boring to read. Rules wise, the daemons are a pretty balanced army, I lose as much as I win with it. Daemons have a lot of the csm powers, but are a lot less powerful, to balance the lack of a psychic test.

Id like to reply to the accusation of me as more or less a poor sport and power games. I played 40k for at least 3 years before the new wave of gamers, with an all slaanesh cult army. This was when the cult armies sucked balls, and i had a less than stellar win record, as did robyn with his khorne cult list. The problem is that i need to improve, and challenge myself to attain higher goals. At first this was expressed in my modeling and painting. Although most of my work has been surpassed, there was a time when i was winning best painted at tournaments all over western Canada. At that time i felt that i had accomplished my modeling and painting goals, so i turned my attention to becoming a better player, in the hopes that i could go after the best overall, and best general awards. If you are going to win tournaments you have to take effective armies period. Fluff might win you best sportsman, but in my experience that catagory is always heavily biased in the favor of the home town crowd, and is almost unwinnable if you go to an out of town tournie. Best overall and best general require power armies. (and how do you develop these tournament armies? Why to use them at home) The problem with the chaos codex is the lack of effective units. There are very few combinations that are powerful enough to be competitive. Right around when you joined the league Greg, there were some very powerful non chaos armies being played. At that time i had never won a saskatoon league championship, despite my successs in out of town tournies. When the new chaos codex came out, i saw my opportunity to use the models i DID have, from my army (that used to suck), to make a run at the title. I played with 2 lashes only a few times, and never 2 daemon princes with lash, because i only had one slaanesh daemon prince. When i won the league, it was with one prince with the lash, and one nurgle prince. One oblit only, and the rest a mix of slaanesh, khorne and undivided. Since my league win i have not really played. Why? I cannot afford to go to tournament, so i lack the motivation. Without goals im not driven. I dont get any pleasure out of taking cheezy lists that crush my opponent, and the few times that i did take 2 lashes i spent most of the game appologizing for how stupid it was. Games are only fun, if both people are enjoying themselves, and the closer the game the more exciting it is. If i ever start playing again you can count on me having a powerful army from one of the codexes that give you enough options that you are not forced into taking cheezy =I=censor=I= that pisses your opponent off. I have seen a number of people in the new league playing some pretty stupid and abusive list, so i get a little annoyted that i am still getting heat over this 2 years later... especially when im not even playing any more. /end rant

You should lock it down before Cam kills my fuckin' eyeballs with his lack of paragraphing! MEIN EYES!

I don't care about 40k, but the larger GW univers past our doors in Saskatoon is not as friendly a place. Who cares? It's those other places who's cries go out and make GW change/alter things to their fancy. Soft armies and non cheesy armies might be fine around town, but if you travel to other centers your day may be spoilt by playing groups of people who use the rules as written, and don't take any of the soft =I=censor=I= from their books.

You guys remember Red Deer right?

So bad writing for our games means that the games get changed. One bad codex begets another. Then someone tries to put the brakes on and bring out a more level codex and that gets even worse.

Fantasy is really bad for that right now. My definition of a good army book is one where ALL the stuff in the book, while I might not like it, has a value on the table in at least some situations. In fantasy a ton of the books have stuff in them (Dwarf Scouts, Empire Stupid rocket launcher thing, Orc Boar Boyz) that have zero value on the table except in an extremely rare and retarded situation you have to cook up from scratch using nothign but insanity and fecal matter as ingredients.

I hate what Gav Thorpe did for the Fantasy side of things during his reign. His explanation of wanting all the players to abandon their tourny mindset and play for fun is bullshit. WH 7th ed. has 4 scenario's in the book ( I Think) and I think three of them are unplayable. He also wrote in the one playable scenario a rule, not a guideline as he would suggest, that NO terrain be placed in the 24" strip between deployment zones. So... no terrain. Fun. Good one, idiot.

The CSM 'dex might be bad, it might be good, but with his hand in it's involvement I gaurantee without reading it's got....

-At least 1/4 of the units are stuff you'd never, ever take willingly. Either crazy over pointed or some unusable special rule

-A blatant revision of stuff that was unplayable in past editions, to make them super good now. The ole' "Flippety-Floppety"

-The other way around. Stuff that might have been underpointed previously has been super =I=censor=I= kicked in the other direction, or nerfed so only it's unplayable. The ole "Floppety-Flippety".

I know this happens in any revision, no matter who writes it, but I find Gav-isized books to me the most dramatic in that regard.

He sucks a ton.

Well i never said "dishonest" I said i had more restraint on taking the power armies than you. and the was thrown in to indicate that i was jibin you both and not trying to hurt your feelings.
To be honest i haven't played against someone who took 2 lash princes before. I played cam's army of the lash prince and nurgle prince and it was actually fun, although he hid a single guy to hold an objective so i lost.

I never used a prince and a great daemon i only have one large model.

Well i guess i should not mention people in my posts anymore as i seem to be hurting some soft feelings about things. Sorry Cam for picking on you as I know people have ridden you back about it lots, and Robyn, I guess I'm sorry too, especially because i got some cool FW stuff from you. Gotta keep Santa happy or i'm off his list.

<-- this the cool/sly guy throwin down quips to make you think twice about messin with him.

Oh, and those demo charges were crazy. I think i actually let you win that one because it was your last game with the old dex

His response wasn't quite what I expected. I have to say I agree which what he said, but with the caviat that has conveniently already been posted by Scott. One thing to add though: Gav failed to mention how he abused his powers to make rules to benefit only the armies he played. This may sound like rubbish conspiracy talk, but some of the older 40k gamers can back me up on this:
flip flopping weapon destroyed and immobilized on the vehicle damage table in the last edition to benefit his falcons.

Allowing mind war to make a chaos marine squad loose favour with their god, and making the craft world eldar codex which conveniently gave you a list where you didnt need to take useless troops, and if you couldnt get it through your head to not take them, they were limited to a maximum of 3 selections. Oh and all the good stuff you could now take 6 selections of! yay!!!....

I want to make an apology to Greg, and probably everyone else who read my post in this topic. I kind of flew off the handle a little bit. I just got a little irritated that i developed such a bad rep so quickly among people who really diddnt know me that well. I guess there was no real point of reference, or knowledge of all the time effort and good things i did for the hobby up until my cheeze run.

Its very possible that i am being over sensitive to this, so again im sorry i kind of flew off the handle, and especially that i singled you out Greg, for only one small comment.

Cheers,
Cam

Its okay Cam, Greg really does have that effect on people, but chat with him for 5 minutes, and you realize he's a big ol' teddy bear.

...A super effin' irritating teddy bear when he feels like it, but a teddy bear non-the-less.

I like to turn my every-day life into a facinating, entertaining movie at the expense of everyone else. (Galaxy cinemas charges too much)

It's ok Cam. I take no offense from your defense. (Logically that should never happen unless you defense was to create an offense....)