They are making fools of us all

6th edition hanging out with his best pal Bigfoot.  He's no longer on speaking terms with the Lock Ness Monster.

It was going to be Tau with super suits.
Then it was Black Templars with eternal warrior killers
Then 6th edition was epic.
Then it wasn't
Now its Dark Angels with fancy white dwarf bindings. (I'm not going to link to any rumors.  They'll get no site traffic from me.)

At first I was going to write about how 40k should just be renamed Space Marine, but then I decided to not give a flying {redacted}  about rumors anymore.  The online 40k community is getting really hungry for upcoming release information, and I think people are taking advantage of that fact.  Either for site traffic, wishful thinking, or just for the fun of fooling people. 

As far as rumor accuracy goes, I think the happy time is over.  With the exception of plastic Thunderhawks and Summer of Flyers, the rumors for the last few years have more or less panned out.  For some reason that's no longer the case.  I think that a good chunk of the current online 40k community was generated by rumor mongering.  In my personal experience I looked to the 40k online communities for two things; to improve my game, and to find out what was coming out next.   With 5th edition being a mature product, there isn't much new strategy to discuss anymore.  In absence of any good ePersonality drama, there isn't much alse for the online community to churn over except for rumors.    

Basically we're all craving something new, and the blogs and forums are doing their best to supply it.  Unfortunately accuracy is not being supplied in equal amounts.  It's a situation that we all helped create.  Supply is being generated to meet our demand.  It's about time that we all voluntarily stopped caring about rumors.  Join me in forming the rumor Inquisition!

Bad arguments for the 6th ed. "leak"

Time for more logical fallacies.  This one pertaining to the 6th ed. rules "leak".

The primary argument I've heard for the leaked rule book being real follows:

A real 40K rule book takea a lot of effort to write.
This leaked rule book took a lot of effort to write.
Therefor This leaked rule book is a real rule book.

Or abstractly:


All A is a B
C is a B
Therefore C is an A


To make it clear, lets Venn it out

Just because something takes effort does not mean that it is real, only that it could be.  Yet, this is a common argument in support of it,

Another fallacy I see in relation to the leak is wishful thinking.  Since the leak matches what people want the next edition to be like, they are more inclined to believe it.  

Then there's this gem from a guy by the name of Stucarius:

“The work that has gone into this set of rules is legion. There are not that many designers in this community who could do it and I cannot imagine anyone who would and then not take credit.” 

To be honest there is absolutely no evidence I have seen so far that points to this not being a leaked copy or a near final draft of the rules. Very much the opposite actually. All the circumstantial and logical evidence, not to mention history (see the leak of 5th ed) point to this being the rules.

Since there is no evidence that is is not true, it must be true.  That does not logically follow.  This is what is known as an argument from ignorance(not trying to be mean, that's really the name of the fallacy).  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

There's also a false dilemma.  It presents the choice that its real or its being done by someone who would intentionally not take credit for it.  This is denying the possibility of other reasonable assumptions, like the author is unavailable to take credit or doesn't want to be sued by GW.  The whole argument right now is being presented as a false dilemma.  Either it's real or a hoax.  It's denying the very real possibility that it is someones pet project; not something done to intentionally deceive.

There's some correlation is not causation action going on too.  Just because the 5th edition leak turned out to be real, does not mean that the 6th edition leak will turn out to be real.

The leak could very well be true.  Tearing apart the arguments, does not change the truth of the matter.  But if the arguments for the potion are bad, and the evidence for the position is bad, it is most likely that the position should not be affirmed.  The evidence against the hoax is just about as bad as the evidence for.  To me that's a push.  I'll wait and see what happens.

I do think it's interesting that with equaly poor evidence for and against most people seam to believe the leak is real.  I think that's because most people want to believe what they are reading is really 6th edition.  Unfortunately wanting something cannot change reality.

Indy GW store opening on the 21st

Check it out.

I plan on checking it out.

Cognitive Dissonance, Dunning and Kruger, and probably some other things

Time for another psudo-apologist post about GW with a sprinkling of cognitive bias.  I'm fascinated by biases and trying to understand the reasons why we believe things.  Have you ever noticed how no mater what the topic is people tend to act in the same way when their opinions and beliefs are challenged?  Whether you have a Mac and a Windows guy, a Privateer and a GW guy, or a Democrat and a Republican, its always the same tired back and forth arguments.  It goes way beyond just the standard sloppy logical fallacies.  You can be dead right and still make a logical fallacy in your argument.  I'm talking about the way people think they are dead right when in reality they are dead wrong.

It's not rational behavior in any sense.  There are psychology studies that show that when you give people good evidence contradictory to their beliefs it only makes their original beliefs stronger.   A current theory behind this is that the person experiences cognitive dissonance.  The two competing ideas bounce around inside the person's head causing stress, so the person has to alter their perceptions to alleviate the source of that stress.  We also tend to value our own experiences over those of others, so we will often rationalize away any contradictory evidence instead of altering our understanding of our own feelings on a subject.  Other times people will just ignore the contradictions completely and not realize they exists ("Keep government away from my medicare", anyone?).  

Psychology is a soft science.  It's hard to do the controlled studies it takes to really examine cause and effect relationships in peoples' behavior without raising batches of clones in bubbles.  There are many compelling experiments that do describe the behavior I'm talking about as best as can be done.  You can read about the studies themselves by jumping off the reference links in the articles already mentioned.

"So how does this all relate to apologizing for GW?", you may ask.  Well, I think people have a few contradictory ideas about games workshop bouncing around in their head.  Often I see people concurrently assign super-competence and incompetence to GW simultaneously.   For instance take this comment that appeared recently on TheBack40K:

You'll never SEE a good competative game of 40K 'by the book'...because there is little profit in it. For example: Why make halberds +2 to Init and not +1? Because this makes Init 5 furious charge types too competative and along with things like GK termies getting frag grenades to one-up other termies...not harping on GK, just looking at how every codex does not MARGINALLY overshadow msot of the previous armie's books....if there's not much edge to playing and buying all those new models, who's going to lay out the cash?

The same goes with a unit's effectivness on the battlefield being some indication to GW pricing....for example, the Ogre Magi figure from Reaper looks better than the Obliterator from GW...yet you can buy two for the price one oblit. Why are wraithguard $15 a pieece, when their metal content is no better than a assault marine? 

GW KNOWS people love 40k Tourneys yet refuse to say 40k is a competative game. Why in Krist's name does it take years to get codex out? I believe they think a smaller consistant company with a captured audience is better than one that targets more folks with faster turn around on their game books. There's no reason new updated codex shouldn't come out every 3 years, period, and updated minor rules yearly. If they did a large Codex official rules update book for 4+ armies every year, a lot of the gamer tested balance issues would be fixed.

So GW is devious enough to know that they can leverage codex creep and unit effectiveness to dollar cost to maximize profit, but is not smart enough to release product in a reasonable amount of time.   Well of course not, they are too busy being capital 'E' evil.  The characterization may be a bit of a stretch here, but I think it's a common sentiment.  People tend to insist that GW is incapable of releasing a balanced game, but still can find creative ways of ripping you off.  You could argue that the marketing is smarter than the design team, but
a smart management would know that it's much easier to sell a good product than a bad one.

Sometimes I think that GW could do things better, but I also know that I am none of the following things:

• A miniature sculptor
• A miniature manufacturer
• A professional game designer
• A CEO of a company with an international sales and distribution network.
• Responsible for the jobs of hundreds of people
• Responsible to hundreds of shareholders

There is another neat little cognitive bias known as the Dunning-Kruger effect.  Basically, you have a hard time understanding fields that you have limited knowledge off.  So much so, in fact, that you tend to overestimate your skills in areas you are not proficient in.  In other words, you don't know how dumb you are.

We as amateurs and the uninitiated can look at the actions of GW and declare what they should obviously do.  Of course, we are only speaking from our own ignorance of the situation.  That doesn't mean I or anyone else couldn't provide good ideas to GW if asked.  It also doesn't mean that GW is infallible.  It does mean that, from our arm chairs, most of us don't have the skills and knowledge to make the right call.

Basically we all arguing about our feelings.  Projecting imaginary motives on others' actions and making false dichotomies.  It doesn't really accomplish anything.  I don't think it's possible to convince someone of anything by arguing.  Our self image and group status are much more important to us than facts we can't understand. I'm guilty of that as much as anyone else is.  I've often blamed game balance and dice instead of accurately measuring my own skill to protect my ego. The best thing that could possibly happen is you can try to get someone to look at the rationalizations behind their opinions.  Hopefully people will work things out on their own.

The Skyray's the limit

My Tau list so far has included a Skyray.  The clarifications on Seeker Missiles made them seem like a tempting include in my eventual Adepticon list.  They bring along a pair of mobile marker lights which also seamed like a good enough reason to give them a go.  Third, the Skyray box includes the parts to make a Hammerhead, so I could still equip the hull with a rail-gun if it didn't work out.

The first couple of games I used the Skyray it preformed fairly well.  It provided more benefit than my Hammerhead or Broadsides.   Having mobile marker-lights upgraded to hit on 3+ was a solid addition to the list, and it was devastating to most targets to launch a Marcross Missile Massacre from the Skyray.  For most of these battles, I was facing lightly armored foes.  Most of the available armored targets could be adequately handled by battle-suit missile pods.  In those games my st 10 rail-guns where superfluous.  Their low rate of fire meant that they didn't have quite the effect of markerlight boosted st 7 missile pods and st 8 seekers.

The shine wore off the Skyray when I played against Necrons in a Dawn of war game.   The first issue that arose was that my Skyray was stuck in support mode while my Pathfinders moved into position early game.  This meant that I never had the opportunity to fire any seekers.  The second issue was that my missile pods where fantastically useless against Monoliths and only slightly less useless against Quantum Shielding.

This left the whole anti-armor duty for my army onto my two Boadsides and single Hammerhead.  I was rolling pretty badly for my rail-guns, and only managed to immobilize one Monolith with them. I was wishing for a third rail-gun equipped unit the whole game.

This was only my 1500 point list.  My full 1850 Adepticon list adds in two Piranhas to assist against heavy armor, but that may not be good enough.  I'm coming around to the standard reasoning that-no matter how good the Skyray is-it's not as good as anything carrying a rail-gun.

Those two marker-lights the Skyray provides are hard to give up, but I think in the long run having at least one more rail-gun will be more useful.  I would like to add in another squad of two Broadsides in place of the Skyray, but practical considerations will probably lead to using an additional Hammerhead instead.  If I can get the army completed and painted ahead of schedule, I may convert two additional Broadsides.  As it is, I'm not sure I'll have the time to do that.

Eclectic Gamers Unite!

I like to play games.  I like to play lots of games.  I would like to play more games than I currently get to play regularly   While I spend most of my energy on 40K, that doesn't mean I don't like Warmachine, Flames of War, Dystopian Wars, Uncharted Seas, Firestorm Armada, ext, ext...  Unfortunately, reality only allows me to play one game system on any kind on a regular basis.  Time and money are the big factors for the most part.

Money is pretty significant hurtle to overcome, but over a decade of hobby gaming has allowed me to accumulate collections across a broad spectrum of game systems.  I would have a much larger collection if I had not developed some very strict rules on when I allow myself to buy miniature games.  Rule 1: I have to have time to paint it.  Rule 2: There has to be people to play with.

I've broken this rule a couple of times.  This is why I have an unused copy of Space Hulk and both of my Dystopian War and Firestorm Fleets.  Following this rule has kept me from double the size of my Dystopian War and Firestorm Fleets and from starting a High Elf Fantasy army.  It's also keeping me from getting back into Flames of War.

So really, time is the big constraint.  If I have no time to play or paint, then it's a waste of money to get into a game.  Wasting money is a big pit fall for me thanks to the sunk cost fallacy.  The more I spend; the more I want to spend to justify what I've already spent.

I would like to branch out a little on a regular basis and play other games, but I can't justify the expense if I'm not guaranteed to have the regular basis in the first place.    If I knew I could get in at least 2 games a month of Flames or War, I'd defiantly collect some British armor as soon as I finished my Tau.

The ironic thing here is that Indy has a big FoW community.  Unfortunately, they primarily play on weeknights at stores that are an impractical distance from my home and office for weeknight gaming.  While you might have the occasional gamer that pays for both sides, the communities tend to give each other a wide berth.  The Fantasy guys and 40K guys and the Warmachine guys, and FoW guys don't play on the same days.  There's practical considerations behind this.  Game stores have limited room, and it's not good to have players from a half dozen systems competing for table space.

When I was in college and single, I could spend two or three nights a week at the game store.  With a full time job, a full time wife, and at minimum a 30 minute commute to a game store,  I can't do it anymore.

So, today I had a thought.  Wouldn't it be nice if there was a gaming club that focused on the eclectic gamers of the world.  Able Company and Hivefleet do a great job for the FoW and 40K communities respectfully, but I think there is a need for a club that focuses on the entire miniature gaming community.

A primary job for the club would be to organize a gaming schedule.  It would pick a day and a local store to set up shop in, and set up a rotational schedule of gaming systems.    For example: the first Saturday of the month is 40K/Fantasy, the second is FoW, the third is Warmachine, and the forth is anything goes.

Something like this would allow people with limited gaming time to play all the games systems they like, without having to juggle their schedules so much.  It would also help alleviate the often encountered problem of gamer burnout.  People just get tired of their games when they play them too much.  Spending some time playing something else would give people much needed break.  Too often people end up switching games by selling off one army to buy into another game.  I've always regretted the times I've done that.  I'll eventually want to play the game I sold again at some point.

What are peoples thoughts on this?  Is this something anyone but me would be interested in?
   

Addicted to Plastic

I don't know anybody who regularly plays fantasy, so, if I bought that High Elf army deal from GW, it's not like I would ever get to play with it. Not to mention that I barely have time to finish painting my Tau for adepticon. That doesn't make me want to buy it any less. It's such a good deal.

Of course it wouldn't be enough. I'd still end up sinking hundreds off more dollars into it to get the army just the way I wanted it.

I even want to get back into Flames of War. I know I'd end up spending a few hundred dollars there for maybe only a few games wort of use.

I can't wait for the day when 3D printers are common household devices. It would really make this hobby so much more accessible. It would be so cool to just print off a whole army for a few dollars worth of material and a license fee for the 3D files. We're getting closer every day.