What happened at WarriorSage's venue was completely against the rules of the Faction War that venues and BattleMasters agree to follow in exchange for receiving free prize support from WizKids. Regardless of the morals or the intent behind it, WizKids was crystal clear about how the prizes should be awarded.

As for faction pure, I try to play it all of the time. I just like the idea of fielding an army of the same faction. I don't look down on people who field 'rainbow' armies; I play against those all the time. Sometimes my faction pure armies beat the rainbow armies, and sometimes they don't.

Bottom line, though; what's the point of complaining about (and even insulting) those of us who prefer playing faction pure? Why does the fact that people post faction pure armies upset you? Just play whatever makes you happy and stop sorrying so much about what other people are running.

I like the idea of faction pure armies. As a newbie, I think it adds an element of identity to the game. I am a BR player and I will never change. I will buy boosters, trade with friends and stay up late on ebay to get a bigger army. If Wizkids doesn't like that kind of devotion, they don't understand what they have created. I like the looks of a FP army as well, it lends credibility to this genre. I was on "the other side" as a historical gamer for the past twenty-five years. We always laughed at the "Sci-fi freaks".

Anyone else realize Mech snoop has left the table? From the sound of him, He is just a little pissant who got tired of being beat to a pulp by Faction Pure forces at his venue.

I believe requiring Faction Purity will be a mistake and I hope they never make it. And I do really enjoy faction purity. I love playing it.

Maybe not requiring but encourageing faction purity would be good. In many threads there has been good ideas how to encourage faction purity but non of them has been exepted. Of course if there would be requiring faction purity it would be purely each Battlemasters own dissision.

I encourage faction purity at every event I go to, whether I am running it or not. Faction purity ahs its own benefits (eing able to make a formation out of EVERYTHING in you army). I never want to enforce it on someone, but I do encourage it.

Enforced faction purity would have the advantage of greater design space I think.

The design team would only have to consider pieces within the faction and mercenaries when creating a unit to determine if there are any degenerate combos.

As it stands, without faction purity you can build an army with no inherant weaknesses. (ie. use SS artillery, with BR infantry, DF VTOLS and SC mechs)

Admittedly, the design team would have to pay closer attention to faction advantages and disadvantages and make sure they don't break their own rules too much otherwise it would degenerate into every faction having everything with no real special characteristics to differentiate one faction from the next.
(have they ever told anyone what the various factions advantages/disadvantages are?)

I'm certainly glad everyone plays faction pure around here and I think I'll be hard pressed to play anywhere where faction purity isn't encouraged.

You should've told that the Fellowship of the Ring in Balin's chamber in Moria. :)

Sometimes you gotta make a command decision on the field of battle. Do we rules-lawyer it, or do we make it work out? BM's need to lead, not preside. It's about orchestration, not reading from cue-cards.

I'm not some anarchist saying their should be no rule-book, I just think what happened was making the best out of what everyone can see was a flawed situation. I'm sure LE hunting happened everywhere, and WK benefits from happy players who feel they were treated fairly, not leaving the game feeling victimized.

No one was mad. WK intent was that unused prizes be kept for venue support, and that's what happened- they weren't secretly sold off on fleabay.

I myself was at risk to not win Viki and I barely did, as the ex-BM was quite good. But win or lose I understood and supported the idea.

Sometimes the only way to tell the difference between foolishness and bravery is to measure the end result. In this case it worked out.

It doesn't sound like it worked out for the guy playing Bannson's, though - he was refused the LE he should have been given for playing in the event.

And further, no, the venue and/or battlemaster do not have the right to hold back prizes instead of awarding them per WizKids sanctioned event rules, regardless of what they believe will be done with them. Venues receive prizes free of charge to them - what does it matter if a player takes his prize and sells it, trades it, or drives over it in the parking lot?

I guess my point is that the venue doesn't really get a say in where the prizes go - WizKids makes that very clear, and straying from those rules could cost the venue the ability to run WK events in the future, if even one player complains about it.

You and I are on the same page regarding LE snipers; they infuriate me as well, and nothing sucks worse than watching an LE sniper grab a prize to sell off and deny one of my other players the chance to get something he'll actually play in tournaments. However, as much as stuff like that sucks, we're bound by our contract to award the free prizes provided for these events in the manner set down by WizKids.

I did not see any. There were lots of new players but they were just that, rookies. I went to one new venue that weekend. Its now my favorite place to play.

We had a little faction flip flopping but nothing the BMs could not handle. They encouraged some since they wanted to give away the prize support.

I thought the Faction Wars was a huge success and I'm stunned that it was not perceived that way at WK.

Well Mlotoole0, it's a success for wizkids in the event it draws in new players and money. It's a success for the players if we get a lot of prizes and new people to play agaisnt.

That's 2 different things.

And back to what happened at Warriorsage's venue :
Yeah, ok, so it was illegal. That's really not something I wish to care about. If something illegal happens to me and I feel I'm being ripped off I'll do what I can to seek reparation. If the BR player didn't do so, that's his loss. What I wanted to bring under the attention are the LE hunters that such a system of prize give away defeated. The prizes weren't lost, they would be future venue-supported prizes, they just wouldn't go over to LE hunters who'd just sell them over E-bay.

Ok so it was illegal, agreed. Was it a -bad- idea? Not that much. It certainly was not perfect, but it was on the right track.

You don't have to act so outraged that such a thing happened since, as I said, it didn't happen to you and the players of that venue have recourses to seek reparation if they want so.

see it from a venues point of view mlotoole0 not a players Pov

If you ahve 16 players show up for an event, half of them have never appeared before, you have to devote floor space there so they can play. Most venues pay rent directly related to the amount of floor space the store has. Now, the whole point of having in store events is to promote play and boost sales of product. If non-of those players buys any product from the store, but buys it from another sotre or online. Do you think he would want people to take up space playing a game? For the players Faction war was wonderful, almsot everyone was able to walk away with an LE. But at the event, most venues did not see any increase in sales at all. I know at my venue not a single booster was bought, and the only MWDA related sale was some faction dice, mainly because a visiting players venue never had any.

Is playing faction pure a challange? Does it make you a better player? Can you still do well in a game without Powerful peices? or can you only do well when you play total cheese?

it is the personal opinion of every player that answers those questions. WE can hollar and thump our chests until everyone stops playing this game. But the fact is, some people will allways prefer Faction purity, and some won't really care, or never want to.

Until wizkids comes up with faction pure boosters, I think faction purity is going to be finally decided among a group and players they play with. Either way, I hope you enjoy the game

Hmmm, how funny. I played Blow the sticks down at two venues. I won both times. Here were my armies:

All republic:
Paladin Jonah Levin
Balac
Po II Tank
2x Cavalier
1x Infiltrator MkII

All Liao and Merc:
Liao Targe
2x Liao Regulator
2x Merc Balac
1x Merc Zahn
3x Merc Kanazuchi

I won despite there being two dual arty/trike infiltrating/Partisan using armies of all different factions. Yet I won? How can this be? Faction purity can be its own reward, and I will not stop doing it.

LOL!!! this is from the same person that has a trade thread
saying this:

SH Aesir Available - Minty uniques offer only 2 or more. HE actually thinks people will trade 2 Uniques for it!! Then he goes on to say it is 30$ on Ebay. LOL

talion09
your right you can make a faction pure army thats a maybe but its gonna mostly be s*** he has a better chance playing with the best of his stuff the guy im talkin about cant make a pure army any one would use artilery is becoming a must and they dont come in the premere set and i highly doubt 2 or 3 boosters is gonna get you one faction purity is a poor excuse to weed out the eliete players from the weak players or the newbies i can play purity and i dont mind it once in a while to mix things up but i cant see it being manditory that you always play pure armies