l''ETC reconnu par Jervis

Il y aurait un truc intéressant dans le WD?

chtiofonce a écrit:Euh...vous méprenez pas, le ton de Jervis est je crois plutôt ironique genre "les idiots comme ils se prennent la tête à changer nos regles".

chtiofonce a écrit:Euh...vous méprenez pas, le ton de Jervis est je crois plutôt ironique genre "les idiots comme ils se prennent la tête à changer nos regles". Cela dit, je le prend beaucoup moins pour 'nous' ie staff ETC 40k que pour le staff WFB qui ont des règles de compo assez poussées auxquels la pique de Jervis s'applique bien plus ama.

Un gros +1 sur la remarque de Manolo et Arc_ange, il faudrait simplement virer tous les add-ons

from david a écrit:This week Jervis waxes lyrical on the sheer amount of options available for the type of game that you want to play, and how important it is to have a sympathetic gaming group to accommodate this.

I was talking to the White Dwarf team recently about the release of things like Escalation, Imperial Knights and Stronghold Assault, and in a strange, roundabout way, it ended up making me think about how important gaming groups our to our hobby. Now, thinking on my part has a number of side-effects (which is why I avoid doing it if possible); first of all, there is the required consumption of bacon butties and cups of tea to fuel the process, and then the general looks of worry and confusion on my colleagues’ faces as I pace around the office muttering to myself, and finally a burning desire to write about my hard thinking in this very column! So, you can’t really blame me for this month’s rambling notes on the importance of gaming groups, it’s really all the White Dwarf crew’s fault for making me think about the subject in the first place, the blighters.

Anyway, starting at the beginning, supplements are important to the hobby, because they allow you to explore the full scope of things – in a nutshell, they illuminate all of the different nooks and crannies of our hobby and allow you to include those things in your games. This wasn’t always the case; when first published, our games started out as being small-scale infantry games, and it is only over the course of a few decades’ work by our miniatures designers and rules writers that we have reached the current situation where you can field huge war machines, gigantic monsters, flying creatures and vehicles, and more armoured behemoths than I can shake a stick at! When looking for an analogy to illustrate this point, I tend to use the book and box covers for our games, and I am trusting the WD crew to include a couple of appropriate covers for you to look at with this article. Assuming they have, notice that, although the main focus will be the warriors in the foreground, the illustrations also include things like huge war machines, flyers, massive tanks and so on in the background. And this is where the analogy to the evolution of the hobby comes in: at the start of the hobby our games were all about the foreground; now they can be about the whole picture.

However, the sheer breadth of choice these supplemental rules bring means that it is rare to impossible to use all of the different elements we’ve created in every game you play. In the old ‘infantry skirmish’ days, pretty much all of the rules we’d created were used in all of the games that were played. Nowadays, you can pick and choose and, if you want, vary those elements you use, meaning that there are lots of different ways to play. To use another analogy, the rules have changed from a set meal where you must eat everything you are given, to a buffet where you get to choose what to put on the plate. (And that is quite enough analogies for one issue! – Ed)

So why did all that make me think about the importance of gaming groups? Well, all this choice means that the way we all go about organising our games has had to change a bit. Back in the day, pretty much all you could do was fight small-scale infantry skirmishes, and all games would be rather similar. Basically, if you didn’t like infantry skirmishes, well, you were right out of luck. Now, taking 40K as an example, you can do anything from a Kill Team mission through to a weekend long session of Apocalypse and lots of different things inbetween! Not only does this mean that you will need to pick and choose what sort of game you want to play before you play it, but it will also almost certainly mean that there will be some types of game that you prefer to play.

It’s this last point that makes finding a good gaming group so beneficial to your enjoyment of the hobby. Choice means that there will be some sorts of game you prefer, and finding a group of like-minded individuals to play with is therefore more important. In the old days, the game was so limited in scope that there was really only one way to play, and so wherever you played, you had to play that way. With more choice you need to find other people that are on your own wavelength; well, either that or end up playing games that are just not your cup of tea.

But gaming groups are much more than just a bunch of like-minded friends getting together to play the type of games they prefer. A proper gaming group will develop from a set of acquaintances with a common set of interests, into a tight-knit group of friends with a shared passion who are capable of achieving some quite extraordinary things. Over the years I’ve met lots of these kinds of gaming groups. Although similar to a club, they are usually much more specialised, and often quite tight-knit. There’s the group I know that really only enjoy playing highly detailed narrative campaigns, with intricately worked out backgrounds for all of the units and characters, and the other group that meets every few months and only plays massive games of Apocalypse. There are the committee members of the European Team Championships, who spend huge amounts of time and effort coming up with modifications to our army books and rules, in a grail-like quest to create the perfectly balanced tournament gaming weekend. And then, of course, there are all those other groups that meet in garages and basements once a week or once a month, and who write to me to tell about their perfect version of the hobby.

As you can tell, I am something of a fan of games groups; I am a member of several myself, each of which pushes different hobby buttons for me. Fortunately, it’s actually quite easy to start up a gaming group for yourself, though it will take time for it to blossom into the kind of thing I have talked about above. But, from tiny acorns mighty oaks do grow, as they say. Just watch out for people at your local gaming store or club who seem to be on your wavelength, and are interested in the types of games you like. Pluck up your courage, and challenge them to a game or two, and if you really are on the same wavelength, things will work out from there. Pull in more people that like the type of games you play, and then just let things go from there. You’ll quickly find yourself talking about joint projects with the other members of your group, and in general creating a gaming group that is a shining example of the hobby, and where every game you play will use the sorts of rules that are just perfect for you and your friends. Who could ask for more!

Jervis’s points about the different types of game available to play these days are encapsulated in the cover art of our games and supplements; the Apocalypse cover art by Alex Boyd is a perfect example. In the foreground are teeming masses of infantry, while further back Super-heavies and flyers dominate the battlefield action.




Jervis Johnson is a 30-year veteran of games development and has had a hand in the design of most of our classic games

Rabbitmaster a écrit:leur but c'est uniquement de faire en sorte qu'on puisse jouer ce que l'on veut à 40k, et là dessus faut avouer qu'ils réussissent bien leur job, on a jamais eu une telle diversité d'armées (et très franchement, c'est super agréable dès qu'on joue pas en mode compétitif).

Rabbitmaster a écrit:
A chacun de gérer sa façon de jouer désormais. Du coup la question intéressante c'est : quelle sera la façon "ETC" de jouer ? Avant on était très proche du 40k pur et dur (pas du 100% no-limit mais quasi). Désormais on s'en éloigne de plus en plus du 40k original pour s'orienter vers une version maison (que ce soit en bien ou en mal).