“Casual 40K” Versus “Competitive 40K”: Ramblings on the Perceptions, Pros, and Cons of Both Ways to Play 40K

We’re going to have some fun today. Or maybe we’re just going to end up pissed off. Let’s find out together.

I neither shy away from controversy, nor intentionally court it here at Warphammer*. I just speak my mind. That being said, I can imagine the comments are going to get pretty spicy on this article. That’s alright with me. I always love people’s honest thoughts.

* Games WOKEshop has RUINED 40K with female Custodes! Subscribe to my Patreon to find more stuff to be mad about.

Over my ~6 years in 40K, one consistent theme I’ve noticed is a wide gap between “casual” and “competitive” players. This gap is full of disdain towards the other side, which really bums me out. We’re all in the same hobby, so why are we at odds? I occasionally browse some general 40K groups and comments (waste of time, I know, I know) and it’s pretty wild to me how often I see people totally shit on “competitive players” or “tournament players”. I’ve also seen some condescending comments towards “casual players”, so I’m not going to claim that the negativity is entirely one-sided.

Let’s talk about that gap! Why does there seem to be a big divide between casual and competitive 40K players when we’re all in the same community? Why is there so much disdain between some members of these groups? Do these terms even mean anything? Why am I thinking way too much about some pretty arbitrary terms in a niche hobby? All excellent questions. Let’s dive in.

Where My Perspective Is Coming From

Before continuing the article, let me share my perspective and where I’m coming from. If I’m going to discuss the gap between competitive 40K and casual 40K, I should first come clean about which side I’m on so you can see exactly how biased I am.

Am I a “competitive player”? I would say no… but by other people’s consensus, I guess the answer is yes? I’m honestly really unsure. Let me lay out the evidence:

Literally 100% of the games I’ve played over the last few years have been at 40K tournaments or with friends to practice for tournaments. All I play is 2000 point matched play games using the latest balance updates. I have a cabinet with 40K trophies and awards that I look at when I need some validation so I can remember that sometimes I’m vaguely good at a toy soldiers game and try to hold the sadness off for a few minutes. Now that I put it like this, it’s obvious: I am clearly a competitive 40K player.

Am I a “casual player”? I would say no… but by other people’s consensus, I guess the answer is yes? I’m honestly really unsure. Let me lay out the facts:

I hate the idea of “meta” builds and always run whatever I think is fun or sounds cool over copying successful lists. I barely play any practice games and as of this article haven’t played a single game in the past month. I am a huge believer in helping your opponent if they’re forgetting something and offering takebacks, and prioritize fun over winning and banter a lot when I play. Now that I put it like this, it’s obvious: I am clearly a casual 40K player.

I’m taking the piss a bit, but hopefully you can see the point I’m trying to make. I think the terms “competitive 40K” and “casual 40K” are mostly useless terms. But they are emotionally charged terms that people often portray as in opposition to each other, so we should at least vaguely try to define them.

What Is Competitive 40K, and What Are Competitive Players?

I don’t really know! It’s a truly meaningless term. Defining Competitive 40K is a bit like defining a balk (iykyk).

Perception

From what I’ve picked up over years of reading comments online, “competitive 40K” is most commonly used to mean 40K played by people being jerks and being bad sports. So when your average person on some faction Facebook group says “I hate competitive players” that’s actually completely rational. All of their frustrations they’ve ever had in a game are being foisted upon some mythical amalgamation of “competitive players”. Your average person saying “I don’t like competitive players” is saying “I don’t like people that I don’t like”. It’s a useless statement, but one that is entirely logically consistent at least. No one likes jerks so if competitive player is used as a proxy term for jerks… I guess we all “hate competitive players”.

I used to think “competitive 40K” referred to playing matched play games but I’ve seen plenty of people talking about “competitive players” ruining their 500 point crusade leagues or a “competitive player” stomping noobs in 1000 point games at the LGS, so it’s not really tied to playing tournaments or even tournament-style games.

A competitive player might be someone who needs to win/only gets enjoyment out of winning, but that is objectively not true either. Think about it for a second. If you’re someone that “needs to win”, why would you go to tournaments which are full of tough, experienced opponents? By definition the average tournament player is going to win less than 50% of their games (because some games end in ties). So on average tournaments are filled with non-competitive players that are okay not winning more than half of their games. This ends up in absurdity.

Pros of “Competitive 40K”

If we’re talking about playing matched play games with the goal to score more points than your opponent, then the big advantage I can think of with competitive 40K is having a matched understanding of the goal of the game with your opponent. That’s why I got into tournaments!

Cons of “Competitive 40K”

A more standardized experience can end up being a more boring experience. With all the vagueness of what “competitive 40K” actually means, this is one consistent complaint that I think has a lot of merit.

Anyway this section was pretty useless and said nothing. All I said is that I don’t know what competitive 40K is, but I know it’s boring. Well done Mike! Let’s see if the Casual 40K section actually has anything useful to say. Probably not.

What is Casual 40K?

Casual 40K seems defined mostly by being the opposite of competitive 40K. A casual 40K is a game of 40K that isn’t competitive. I guess? I’m seen way more variety in how casual 40K players approach the game than competitive 40K players. This can be both a good and a bad thing.

For the record, it’s impossible to find any hard data on this but I suspect that the vast majority of 40K games would be “casual games” played within a small group of friends that doesn’t play anyone else outside of their group. And you know? That’s awesome. We all have very limited time alive on the planet. I really do think playing 40K with your friends is really high up on the list of ways you can spend your time.

Perception

Casual 40K seems to be a term for 40K that is “played for fun”. This makes zero sense to me. Basically all games are played for fun. People play competitive 40K for fun. People competing in anything non-professionally are doing it for fun. People attend tournaments for fun.

Casual games are games where you allow takebacks or whatever but I see generous takebacks offered all the time in competitive games like the top table of a GT and see plenty of stories of opponents gotcha-ing each other in casual pickup games, so that definition can’t be right.

Can I be completely real with you and get a little bit armchair psychologist-y with you?

I think despite nerd culture being very mainstream, a lot of people still have some shame associated with being part of a nerdy subculture like 40K players. I literally saw a movie the other day where the punchline to a joke was that the comedienne used to date someone who played Magic. There are a lot of stereotypes about the kind of people who play Warhammer. And by ascribing all the negative stereotypes about Warhammer specifically to “tournament players” and then being very vocal about how different they are from competitive players they are, they kind of launder their shame through competitive players.

Wait, you think Warhammer players are nerds with bad hygiene that spend way too much time and money on toy soldiers? That’s ridiculous. That describes competitive players, not all players.

Reality

If I get the win? Oh that game was just two mates having a laugh! Who cares about the score, I wasn’t even trying. Oh did I win the game? I didn’t even notice because I’m such a casual player just having a laugh haha! Haha maybe I’m some sort of savant because I won without even trying, but to be honest I don’t even know what the word “savant” or “wunderkind” means because I’m just such a goofy casual just having a laugh! The crazy thing is I was in a “Gifted And Talented Children” program when I was a younger haha… maybe that’s why I won the game even though I was just a mate having a laugh?

If you get the win? Games Workshop… it’s time to have a serious discussion about how competitive players are ruining Warhammer 40K.

All joking aside (am I joking? Mostly), I think casual 40K is such a broad term that it’s impossible to define. Any term whose defining characteristic is not being something else is a really bad building block for a community.

Pros of Casual 40K

I guess the pro of being a casual 40K player, whatever that means, is that it requires less time investment. That’s part of the definition of casual, isn’t it? I don’t even think that is necessarily true, some casual players play really often especially if they have a group of friends they live near. And that’s awesome, I’m all for casual players having as much fun as they can in the hobby!

Cons of Casual 40K

The biggest downside is wanting to play “casual 40K” means you have no shared set of guidelines for a game with an opponent. One person’s idea of “casual 40K” is just bringing their new tournament list that they don’t have a lot of reps with yet so they don’t feel they’re very good with it yet. Another person’s idea could be bringing a total nonsense list that they find funny. Another person could refuse to play against that person’s nonsense list because it looks “too sweaty” for real or imagined reasons. One person brings a Lord Of Skulls because they think the model is awesome, the other person is mad someone brought a Lord Of Skulls to a casual game. I’m exhausted just thinking about this.

Especially for a lot of neuroatypical people, that kind of murky social situation to navigate can be much more stressful than playing a more defined game of 40K.

The Real Distinction

I want to entirely do away the “casual 40K” vs “competitive 40K” distinction. It just doesn’t convey any useful information. I know my one Warphammer article is just pissing into the ocean in terms of changing everyone’s mind… but I’d like to propose a different (and hopefully more accurate) way of thinking about types of 40K games.

Instead of viewing 40K games as a continuum between “casual” and “competitive”, I believe we should view games as a measured on 3 different axis.

Without further ado, I present an image that summarizes the Warphammer theory of how to discuss 40K games. I spent hundreds of hours working on the graphic here, so please no mocking my design work:

Tournament Play vs Narrative Play

This is the biggest distinction and I think what most people are clumsily trying to reference when they talk about “competitive 40K” vs “casual 40K”. Before continuing, I want to make one thing clear: I think both tournament play and narrative play are really cool, but I believe narrative play is genuinely peak 40K gaming and something I love and wish I did more often.

Tournament/Matched Play is a game with an official score system and set terrain maps/missions, where the goal is to score the most points.

Narrative Play is a game where the goal is to tell a story. Notably with Narrative Play, the game doesn’t have to be remotely balanced, because battles (both real and mythical) rarely are!

Stuff like a “Last Stand” custom battle where it’s 3000 points of Imperial Guard on a hill versus 1500 points of Tyranids but the Tyranids get +1000 points of models every turn to show waves of Tyranids arriving on the planet, and both players play for the fun of seeing how long the Imperial Guard can hold the hill? That shit is so fucking cool! Narrative play is just peak.

The Grand Narrative that GW runs every year seems like such an amazing experience to be a part of. I’m honestly planning to sign up for the Grand Narrative this year or next year, and I want to go in a full costume and get really into it. One of my flaws is I struggle to just half-ass things and not get really into them and I’m so hyped for a year where I get really into supporting the Chaos side of the Grand Narrative and having fun helping the Dark Gods (after they’ve helped me so much over the years).

The big issue with the best Narrative Play: It is not “casual”. It’s often really high effort! The best narrative games feature beautiful custom tables and unique missions with lopsided rules that both players designed together. That’s a lot of work. It also requires both players to be on the same page with what they’re looking for, so it’s hard to have a pickup game of Narrative Play.

The distinction between “Playing with the Goal of Maximizing Victory Points” and “Playing with the Goal of Telling a Story” is by far the most important distinction between different types of 40K games and much more important than some nebulous “Casual vs Competitive” divide.

High Etiquette vs Low Etiquette

This is another key spectrum that games of 40K can be placed on. Everyone has their own standards and definitions of what good sportsmanship and behavior during a game is, so I’m not going to try to define this exactly. But what I will say is that in my experience, etiquette has basically no correlation to whether a game is played at a tournament or not. You’ll find some cheaters and scumbags playing 500 point pickup games at your LGS. You’ll find absolute gentlemen/women at tournaments. Conversely, you’ll find some cheaters and scumbags at tournaments. You’ll find absolute gentlemen/women playing 500 point pickup games at your LGS.

High Effort vs Low Effort

I think this is also what people are referring to when they ask for a “casual game” vs a “competitive game” but are playing 2000 point tournament style games either way. They want to play versus someone that has put a similar amount of effort in. If you show up to a “casual-competitive” game and the opponent is a tournament grinder playing their 8th game this week, or it’s a totally new player who takes 7 hours for a game because they have to stop and look up every stat before they roll any dice, you’ll probably be disappointed in the game either way.

I think one of the big issues with human interaction in general is people have a lot of expectations that they don’t know how to understand or communicate, but that’s a bigger issue than we can solve today at Warphammer.

What are the Best Types Of Games?

There is no right answer to this. It truly depends on the individual.

Personally? I like to hammer the shit out of the Tournament Play/High Effort/High Etiquette corner because that’s where I get the most mental stimulation and enjoyment. In the future, I’d love to explore the Narrative Play/High Effort/High Etiquette corner more because I think that’s where you can create the most magical moments on the tabletop.

Maybe you love telling stories on the tabletop more than outscoring opponents on VP but don’t have a lot of free time or a close group of Warhammer buddies to create custom missions with. In that case, you’ll love the Narrative Play/Low Effort/High Etiquette corner. That corner is Crusade in 10th Edition, where the focus is on narrative play but GW has already created a detailed framework for a narrative to emerge and you basically just have to show up to games.

And these factors all exist on a spectrum. Maybe Sarah and Joseph only want to play Matched Play missions with all the latest balance updates, but it annoys Sarah that named characters are in every battle, so Sarah and Joseph agree to not used named characters when they build their lists. Their enjoyment comes somewhere between optimizing for VP and telling a narrative.

But regardless of where you lie, hopefully you can see how shallow and meaningless “casual” vs “competitive” are in the context of games of 40K.

The Point I’m Trying to Clumsily Make

If you don’t play tournaments, you have complete freedom with how you play games and enjoy the hobby. You and your friends can ignore any FAQ you don’t like, or terrain rules you don’t like, or any rules at all you don’t like.

And as a tournament player (these days, but not always) I’m not judging you for that. Far from it. I hope you have a good group of friends and are forging your own way through enjoying the hobby.

I’m just a bit bummed that when a lot of people say they are “casual players”, what they mean is they play competitive-style 40K but play it poorly while judging the people more invested than them in playing tournament 40K. You can get as creative as you want when freed from the shackles of the tournament rules cycle and I’d love more people to consciously explore that. Between us, Narrative Play and focusing on awesome models and storytelling is the coolest way to enjoy the hobby. Don’t tell any of my tournament buddies I said this or I’ll lose whatever competitive credentials I have…

GW Is “Catering to Competitive Players” Too Much in 10th Edition

This is an interesting concept so let’s explore this. This is probably the biggest source of resentment I see towards competitive players online. I think the statement that “GW is catering to competitive players” is more false than true, but it’s not entirely false. Let’s pull on this thread a bit and see where it leads.

I’m going to list a bunch of big 10th Edition changes and let’s try to sort them in the “catering to Competitive Players (TM)” and “catering to Casual Players (TM)” categories. This is totally unscientific, but let’s give it a go.

• All terrain is boring and similar looking ruins
  • Verdict: Catering to Competitive Players (TM)
  • 10th Edition is a step back from 9th Edition and older editions in general in this regards. I totally agree with this point.
• Power Level became the universal points system
  • Verdict: Catering to Casual Players (TM)
  • The casual points system became the only points system in the game, that seems like a huge win for casual players that everyone has just forgotten about
• More frequent balance updates
  • Verdict: Catering to Competitive Players (TM)
• Maelstrom cards became the universal secondary system
  • Verdict: Catering to Casual Players (TM)
• Stratagems got massively reduced in number
  • Verdict: Catering to Casual Players (TM)
• Wargear simplified
  • Verdict: Catering to no one, or catering to both? This could go either way.

You can weight these changes however you want, but I have a really hard time objectively looking at the changes in 10th Edition and thinking it’s too catered towards competitive players. Some things were catered to one group, some things were catered to another group. I’m very open to other people’s thoughts on this!

“I Would Allow That Takeback in a Casual Game But Not a Competitive Game”

This will be a short section but that sentiment pisses me off every time I see it. The level of sportsmanship or grace you give your opponent has nothing to do with the level of competition, yet I see it basically any time I see a newer player asking an etiquette question. If you are only a good opponent with “nothing on the line”, you’re not a good opponent. If I’m playing a friend in their garage, and then I’m playing them for the win at a tournament the following week, we’re going to play that game the exact same way.

These comments mostly come from people who don’t play in tournaments I think, and they probably perceive tournament players as a lot more uptight than they really are. You see this a lot with discussions around proxies/alternate models too. Some new player will post a picture of their cool conversation and ask if it’s okay to use that model in game. You’ll see a lot of comments along the lines of “that’s fine in a casual game, but wouldn’t fly in a tournament”. I’m sure there is some TO out there that might have an issue with that model, but I’m sure you’ll also find random “casual” opponents and LGS’s that complain about alternate models. I’ve seen all sorts of crazy conversations and alternate models at tournaments of all levels.

Don’t let loud people online who don’t attend tournaments psyche you out about tournaments. They’re awesome, and competitive opponents are a lot more casual than you’d expect (for whatever either of those terms actually means).

Warphammer’s Warp Warriors TTS League Starts Tomorrow!

Forget all this casual vs competitive talk. Are you interested in growing as a player and facing talented opponents who place a huge focus on sportsmanship and having fun? Come join the Warp Warriors TTS League starting tomorrow in the Warphammer discord! The TTS league has weekly games and runs for 5 weeks, starting tomorrow.

Interested in joining? First, join the Warphammer discord: https://discord.gg/9gavDSgF. Next, get the Warp Warrior role so you get notifications and check out the Warp Warriors channel for more information. The BCP link is available here: https://www.bestcoastpairings.com/organize/event/WFPKGKS2ko4x?active_tab=roster, but don’t sign up unless you’ve joined the Warphammer discord and added the Warp Warriors role or you’ll miss important information.

I just have one request: Please only join if you intend to play each week and you place a high value on sportsmanship. We’ve done a few rounds of Warp Warriors before and it’s always a blast, and we want to keep that good energy going. See you around and good luck if we get paired into each other!

Final Thoughts

I have 0 idea what the reception to any of this rambling is going to be. Hopefully something resonated with you somewhere. And if not, hey I’m just a casual 40K writer so take it easy on me.

As always, have fun, stay safe, and may the Dark Gods bless your rolls!