Actually, that LE hunting happened at our Venue. The owner (ticked off) made a last minute decision and told everyone you had to win at least one game to get an LE. Even if you were the only player for that faction.

So, factions represented by multiple players were paired off and those factions with only one player got paired off.

I was the only DF player and got paired against the only BR player. I won, got Viki, and the BR prize went into the Venue's case to be a prize for a future event. Brilliant. Easy fix to some not fully thought out rules.

But what the #### does that have to do with regular faction pure play?!?

And yes, FP makes for better play, and since when is a kid who's just got his Premiere set gonna be competative anyways? Pretending to stand up for the newbie is a weak excuse.

I agree. Playing faction pure or mixed factions, either way a rookie is going to be schooled by a veteran player, regardless of whether or not that veteran player is using a theme army, an allstar army or a faction pure army...

Rookies aren't competitive until they;
A) Get a good number of figs, far more than a Premier and a couple of boosters. So they have a base of good and decent units that fit their play style...

B) They learn all the various strategies and counter strategies, either by going to games and getting slaughtered by veteran players, or by hanging out here and reading the boards and asking questions, or both...

Frankly, I don't give a flying fig what anyone says, I like playing Faction Pure when I am able to, but for some factions, I simply don't have enough cheap filler pieces, particularly things like peasants. We need more peasant sculpts, and they've only been used for four different factions.

You cannot tell me the rest of the factions don't have a bunch of untrained yahoos that want to fight with pitchforks and hunting rifles.

Like I said, nobody bought anything during the Faction Wars event. If thats the impression WK came away with from the Faction Wars, then they got it all wrong.

Booster sales boomed before the event. The biggest problem was distribution of the popular sets. Most retailers were out. Perhaps alot of these folks could not connect this demand with the event. The singles market also boomed. Retailers who had them quickly sold out.

I played in 3 events and walked away with one LE. My son played in 3 and got nada. Each event had well over 20 participants. Many played the same Faction each time and gave away the LE prize.

Faction War created a great buzz, brought in new players, increased sales, and got people emotionally evolved in the fluff. Tell me thats not the "environment" they want to create.

WK needs to do a little actual research and not listen a little negativity.

Run the Faction Wars without the extra Prize Support. That will get rid of the LE mongers (I did not see any to begin with). Tie it all into the fluff and track the "standings" on the web. Give the winning faction the next sets chase unit. This would be so easy to do it hurts my brain just thinking about.

Konigh-Wolf, while I like to be optimistic, you mostly used guesstimates numbers...

I'll agree that Faction war must have driven at least -some- booster sales and also a -lot- of single sales (which also drives booster sales). I'd be curious at the number of booster sales during the month prior to Faction war, not during the faction war itself.

Quite frankly though, who doesn't have 1200 pts of his favourite faction? Not everyone, I agree, but the majority of MWDA players are late teens to adults (up to 50years+). Basicaly, people who have some sort of revenue and money to spend on hobbies.
You know what drives booster sales? New sets, booster drafts and the week-end following payday.

I'll agree that Faction War -must- have driven booster sales up to some extend, just not all that much.

WarriorSage :
As allways, you deserve your name.
I don't think I've ever seen you say one truly stupid thing. (Not kidding anyone here, we all say silly things at time)

In regard to faction purity, as I haven't thrown in my 2 grains of salt yet...
I like faction purity. I play faction pure. Why? Because it's fun, because everything is the same color and it looks nice and because I don't feel like I'm cheating the game because I'm not using all the best units; I'm not "min-maxing".

If any of you play RPGs up to some extent, you probably know the term "Munchkins". You know, those people who create characters that are a psychiatrist's dream. All the mental illness possible, just so he or she can get those precious extra points into their stats. That's how I see the "All-Star armies" people; Munchkins. They're there to beat the system and grab the prize, just as Munchkins are there to beat the system and kill the most ennemies (and thus get the most phat lewt and XPs).

I don't like all-star armies. It was ok when only DA was out because back then, not all factions were very well balanced (Playing Pure Bannson's was hell, with only peasants and standard foot as infantry)

But now, 4 expansions and 2 years later, all factions have a great range of units, and we have mercenaries to pally to one's weaknesses, up to a certain point.

The only reason to not play faction pure is if you want to be a Munchkin, is if you want the prizes, is if you want to win at all cost. That's not generally the kind of people that make many friends. No one has ever liked Munchkins, not even other Munchkins, as they often enter Munchkins wars (seeing who's the best Munckin amongst them).

It's not a very sportmanship-like mentality.

And I declare your argument ("your" as in "whoever might have this arguement") of "Not everyone has enough pieces to play faction pure" as void, since, if you can collect triplicates of units worth 20$+ on e-bay, you certainly have enough ressources to have a good selection of any one faction.

I have made my point.
At least I hope.

Actually, I always thought them to be draftees. Nobody volunteers for meat-shield duty :)

How many sets do we have now?

1 core set
4 expansion sets

I think right now the freedom to let people choose to play faction pure or mixed faction is the beauty of the system. I play faction pure most of the time, but if there is an LE I want I would use power pieces to attempt to win them.

What scares me in this discussion is how much knowledge people like kinnison and mech snoop have, and how zealots some of the faction purist behaves.

I was particular scared by the comment of Warrior Sage

QUOTE"Actually, that LE hunting happened at our Venue. The owner (ticked off) made a last minute decision and told everyone you had to win at least one game to get an LE. Even if you were the only player for that faction."

"I was the only DF player and got paired against the only BR player. I won, got Viki, and the BR prize went into the Venue's case to be a prize for a future event. Brilliant. Easy fix to some not fully thought out rules."

He is a self-proclaimed battlemaster and did not enforce wizkids rules? I mean there is in my opinion too many battlemasters already. How can people be a battlemaster if he or she does not run any games? Is like saying I am a baseball player but I don't play baseball. These things have got to stop, people who are representatives of wizkids should encourage fairplay, but still stick within the rules. It should be of note that Warrior Sage here won an LE and the poor Banson's Raider player didn't? I don't think is the intention for wizkids in faction war to award only for winning. This is bad practice.

Phoenix Hawk: how Battle Masters work now is that you have to run a game within the 2 months after you have been approved by Wizkids, else you lose your BM status. So, while it is possible to still cheat the system, most BMs do run games.

(I think it's 2 months, from what my newly-battlemastered friend has told me)

As for what happened at WarriorSage's venue. Well... I can't say I -disagree- with it. It does seem a bit unfair, but it certainly is on the right track. I'm sure you've also noticed (if you played in Faction War) the people that had several readily-made armies from different factions and that asked around to see if there were any factions not represented, just so they could get an automatic LE. That's probably not Wizkids's intention either.

Thats right. They volunteer to be mechwarriors instead... thats why we have so many battlemechs with crappy attack ratings. :p

Now now, it is totally acceptable to have infantry units with higher attack ratings then mechs. You know, don't put people who can't shoot down on the field, they won't do any good. Better put them in a mech, with the big weapons, they'll have a chance to hit -something-

Wow, I can't believe someone got all worked up about this.

Uhm, Earth to the first poster.... I don't see where it says you HAVE to play faction pure, so what's your beef? If you're tired of people talking about it, then don't read those posts. Sheesh, you should really check your blood pressure and not let these small issues affect you so much... It is, after all, a game. If someone thinks you're cheesy for playing a mix-match of factions, oh well. Just tell them that you don't have unlimited funds like they do and you play to win. I'd never ask to begin with, but if someone told me that, I'd respect their logic.

I like playing faction pure because it's a challenge to me. Has nothing to do with anything else. Sometimes I win, sometimes I lose. If I play Swordsworn, you can bet I'm putting in my Balac. If I'm not, I won't and I'll focus in on that faction's better pieces. I don't expect people to play in the same fashion that I do and that's ok. I have fun no matter what. I'd rather just play and if I win a LE in a tournmanet, then great. If not, I just got to play 3 games in 3.5 hours, had some laughs, groans (for bad dice rolls) and go home.

Relax, drink a beer (if you're of legal age) and enjoy life. It's pieces of plastic. It's not like it's going to solve world hunger or anything like that...

@ Pheonix Hawk

So WarriorSage is a zealot, and Mech Snoop isn't.

Hmm.
Interesting.

Why is that, exactly? Both seem pretty passionate about their viewpoint.

And I don't believe WarriorSage was the BM at the event he describes. Why would he have any say in how it's run? Can Battlemasters enforce rules at events they aren't running? Help me out here.

Oh, hey, that's something I failed to mention.
People seem to instantly associate "faction pure" with "enforcing".
My "beef" is with all-star armies, not people -not- playing faction pure. I know not everyone can play faction pure, that's allright, no problems there. No one has a problem with that (except very very bad people, but we shall leave them un-named and simply refer to them as "Rear-side Cavities").

No, you see, people preach Faction Purity as a way to get rid of All-Stars armies (or Munchkins armies, as I called them in my previous post). I don't think anyone will chastize the guy who has bought a grand total of 1 started and 10 boosters, parsed over all 5 sets, for not playing faction pure. I just want to make sure that you all understand that. This is really about Munchkin Armies and how to get rid of them.

youve got a point yes they may be schooled but at least they got the chance to play we were all once newbies with out $5.00 to spend on boosters to get a decent faction pure army and some players are better then others so they may win a match with the few boosters and one or two premere sets the dice play a part too no matter how good you are if you dice rolls suck well face it your probobly gonna loose but all in all at least the newbie gets to play it kind of welcomes new players to at least get a learning experience he wont gaion by having tons of figs

I play exclusively DF and SW faction pure armies and won the last Midwest regionals playing DF in constructed scenarios. Playing faction pure is an advantage over mixed armies for formations if nothing else. As the game progresses those big infantry formations inevitably get chopped up. I can't begin to count the number of two fig infantry fragments I've seen. This is not a problem for faction pure armies until you've lost most of your army.

But even beyond that, a faction pure army has mostly uniform strengths and weaknesses; which you can exploit and defend. In a mixed army, there are no general strengths that you can use to overwhelm the foe and each unit has its own weakness to uniquely defend. Faction purity allows for a more flowing play style.

As for the economic argument; I only collect two factions. When I buy a booster, I trade off everything else. If I win a sponsored event that does not offer a DF or SW fig, its trade bait to be held in reserve. I would like to ask WK to stop offering two prizes from the same faction. It's quite a pain.