Another debate with someone who completely missed the point. The point is that kids are a victim too, being deliberately targeted over other market demographics because they're easier to sell to, thus dragging down the complexity of the game (from a player stand point) and introducing more and more randomness to compensate for a lack of skill through destroying the actual upper capacity of players potential skill level.

Children playing games? Horrors! Pushing little men around a tabletop is obviously an activity for mature adults that has no place in it for grubby little urchins. Seriously though, whence comes this contempt for kids? I don't know about you, but I used to be one, back when dinosaurs walked the earth. Most of us began gaming as children, our hands and faces always sticky with jam somehow, even when we hadn't eaten any jam. It helped us to develop into the clever, charming, and sexually attractive adults we are today.

We need to get kids playing these games if the hobby is to survive to another generation. Otherwise they'll all grow up grumpy and dull of mind, and become estate agents, corporate lawyers, and mid-level managers. Is that what you want?

I'm personally not disappointed with the current state of 40K at all. I think it's the best that it's ever been, it's just that my favourite faction has been excluded from this Rennaisance. GW has completely lost interest in all things Dark Eldar. Even their line of miniatures is gone from stores. This isn't the first time that has happened, but it's still disappointing.

Even so, I'm pretty sure I could still beat a child, if that were any consolation!

I don't have contempt for the kids, I have contempt for this game being dumbed down to appeal to a broader audience which is something it didn't need since tons of kids and teenagers bought the products already. GW has officially moved away from being a games company because of this; they know their game can't withstand scrutiny so they handwave it away.

It's no secret; without the GAME portion of 40k they'd have far fewer customers. It's also noteworthy that as little as 18 months ago their annual financial report smugly boasted they (paraphrasing) 'do not collect customer feedback', that they 'know what their customer base wants' even though they now earn as little money as they did in 2007. Funnily enough they've now started collecting customer feedback. Probably because it has at last been made unavoidable due to forecasts of closure within 10 years.

So this game makes everyone with an impressionable mind feel like a complete badass, just look at the gross verbosity used inside EVERY codex, EVERY fluff piece. It's nauseating for me and completely strips itself of any credibility because there is so much thesaurus abuse in each paragraph. I don't think there is enough room in a codex for so much crap but somehow they squeeze it in - all these loosely tied together events with a hair-string narrative and a desensitising glut of rich language. FW does it better - their books are tied to events and follow a cohesive plot with in most cases a beginning, middle and end, compared to GW's inhouse efforts which rub off to me as bullshit vertical slices that do a disservice to each army by drowning their character and culture under an ocean of anecdotal historical events. We don't learn anything about these factions aside from the already universally known stuff and then get told they are badasses and these are the events that prove how/why for 30 pages.

You know what this game needs more than -just simply more kids- buying and playing? It needs more adults, like Fritz and Jake the Mountain, guys who are actually socially adjusted and fun to be around, people who actually have their own disposable income to use on luxury products like tabletop miniatures.  People who can rationally debate certain points without getting lost in a maze of relativism. I really hope you *enjoy* playing against all those kids because that's what you'll be getting more of until the games internal consistency is taken seriously and actually balanced towards people.

Did you actually watch the video? He even says too many random elements in game disproportionately favours weaker players (in video games and board games [and by extension tabletop games]) because it lowers the skill ceiling and undermines the power of skill by literally scamming you out of situations where you should have won.