WHFB: One Great Thing

I'm going to keep this update kinda short, but I want to comment on something I've been thinking about for a while.  Brent wrote an article on BoLS explaining the obvious: win/loss is the way to run tournaments, not battlepoints.  Sadly, despite an article written to advocate for the less competitive player is being slammed by the less competitive players in the comments.  The article condemns WAAC gamers, and explains how tournaments can be (and are being) run that brings out competition without WAAC douchebags, yet the FAAC crew can't resist bashing it. 

I asked myself why this is.  And I realized, the FAAC crew doesn't recoil at the words 'WAAC' or 'competitive,' they hate the word 'tournament.'  No sooner than you utter the word 'tournament' then some moron responds with, "THE GAME WAS NOT WRITTEN WITH TOURNAMENTS IN MIND SO STOP TRYING TO RUN TOURNAMENTS!"  So I propose a solution: stop using the word tournament.  Start calling all Grand Tournaments "Grand Conventions" and have a "competitive track" within that.  That way, the hated word won't be uttered.  

But that isn't even the point of this article, as you might tell by the title being about Fantasy.  In 40k there are FAAC douchebags, because the fluff is simply so good.  The 40k fluff is great, and it's so compelling that it creates and attracts gamers that care about fluff above any other concern.  So powerful is this consortium of players that they managed for a decade at least to completely destroy the tournament scene with soft scores, successfully banned special characters, and managed to label any player who understands basic statistics and probability as the one who is ruining the game.

But in Fantasy this isn't the case.  The Fantasy fluff is just not nearly as good.  Reading the fluff section of the BRB would put you to sleep.  Oh the High Elves fought the Dark Elves again in another war, almost lost and ended up turning the tide and winning.  Crazy.  Repeat that story 10 times for each race in the game and their rivals and you have Fantasy fluff.  Because the Fantasy fluff isn't as... compelling... as the 40k fluff there are not nearly as many, nor as vocal FAAC gamers.  I've never made a Dark Elves list and had someone say, "3 bolt throwers?  You know that the Naggarond army would never use that many bolt throwers" or "I can't believe you are mixing Kainite units with normal units in your army!"  Simply put, there is no stigma in Fantasy about army list construction the same way there is in 40k if you give all your Plague Marine units dual meltaguns.  Very few people in Fantasy are going to go into a FAAC frenzy because you mixed chaos gods in your Warriors army.  The same people won't complain when you mix Night Goblins with Black Orcs.  Or if you run more than one unit of Grail Knights.  

I'm not saying that this is better, because the 40k fluff is cool and a rich background can make the games more interesting.  What I am saying is, next time you are playing 40k and someone goes into a FAAComa, take sometime off 40k and play a game of Fantasy and enjoy a game where the FAAC drama is at a bare minimum.