I’m going to open a discussion that can be somewhat of a boogeyman and cause some strong feelings, but it’s one I think we as a community need to have. Today I want to talk about Warband Rotation, and whether or not it needs to be considered for competitive play. I’ll give you the TL;DR and say that for bigger competitive events like Grand Clashes, especially when ITC standing or tickets to invitationals like Worlds are on the line, we may want to lean toward a two or three year cutoff for warbands to prevent out of print and ‘inaccessible’ warbands from making life harder for newer players.

On one hand, old and ‘bad’ stuff doesn’t need to rotate because it naturally stops being played. It’s very rare to see an Ironskull’s Boyz these days, and you didn’t encounter Thorns for a long time until their refresh in Rivals of the Mirrored City. Occasionally something old sees some resurgence when a special Rivals Deck pairs really well with it, such as Malevolent Masks with Lady Harrow’s Mournflight or the Grymwatch, and I expect we will see Wurmspat making a comeback now that Rimewyrm’s Bite is in play, though it’s less likely that those pairings are going to be event winners and shut out the rest of the field.

It bears consideration, however, that this is “The Ultimate Competitive Miniatures Game”. Warhammer Underworlds is intended to be a high-level contest between people looking for every advantage – it’s why we have Errata and FAQ, and why people get grouchy when we go too long between them. You can build your deck to every advantage and look for the ‘best’ option around, but if that option requires to you play an older, out of print warband, you might be at a disadvantage when you can’t get your hands on it. Let’s look at the biggest Grand Clash of the year, held in Warhammer World in the UK this April. This writeup from the Magmahold took a look at the warband composition. 13 Gnarlspirit Packs. 10 Crimson Court. 7 Madmob. If I pick up the game competitively for the first time this week and decide to try for a Grand Clash victory, it might be discouraging to find that a huge portion of the field thinks the best choices are things I literally cannot buy in stores or from GW itself.

Let’s be honest – if you already own the warband life is just fine, but a community thrives when it has growth, not just retention. It sucks that Madmob, CC, Rippa, Gnarlspirit, Gorechosen, Hexbane and others remain very strong and you basically can’t find them. Someday Ephilim and Domitan (who will probably still be top dogs) will be inaccessible to new players, though you could argue they already are – when’s the last time you saw a Wyrdhollow box for sale? It’s a good thing for the health of the game to have cards rotate, and even though your chance of finding an old Rivals deck is pretty low, they’ll move on soon enough. Not so for the warbands.

I understand that GW is loathe to say ‘you can’t play with your toys’ and I as a player would be understandably upset if one of my favorite warbands was banned from competition. That said, we do need to keep an eye on the competitive health of the game and focus on growth of the community. If a newer player consistently struggles to defeat some of the older ‘powerful’ warbands, and people start to notice that the top 8 at Grand Clashes consistently includes several out of print warbands from years past, it might dampen their interest. Would you pick up a new game if I told you the only way to realistically win is to buy this old kit from a scalper on eBay for hundreds of dollars? Would you ever register for a major event?

For the general nemesis, champs, and rivals rules I wouldn’t say we need to change anything. You absolutely should be allowed to bring an old favorite out to play at your game nights – I definitely do. I even think it’s OK if you want to give the Madmob a spin at your local store tournament, though robbing glass from newer players that way could still leave a sour taste in some people’s mouths. For tournament play, especially at higher levels, it might behoove a TO to either blacklist some older ‘problem’ warbands, or whitelist a more recent set of warbands. A tournament in the Vanguard format with only the most recent four releases might be stale, but limiting things to the past 2-3 years of releases might be more reasonable. You can certainly play your old favorites at your club night, but when Glass is on the line it is restrictive for a newer player to be less able to compete without shelling out a lot of money, and that’s not what we should strive for as a community.

However, there is absolutely something to be said about never getting your toys put back on the shelf for you. I don’t want to belabor the recent Beasts of Chaos tragedy, but I have a few thousands points of goats that I can’t play in AoS anymore. I can still play Warcry with them (for now, anyway) and they have a home in The Old World, but some people with Beastmen armies didn’t take the announcement that they were being cut from AoS very well. Every time a Space Marine lineup gets slimmed down and a bunch of old stuff is no longer legal, people throw a fit. I have no data to back this up, but while it might drive sales of new products to an extent it also probably suppresses the player base. Some players may stop playing, others may be hesitant to ‘buy in’ if they know there is a chance their toys might get axed down the line. A big selling point I use to bring people into the game is ‘you can buy one $40 box of models and never need to buy anything again and can play this game with us every week for the rest of your life’.

I don’t pretend to have the ultimate answer to this, but I think it’s worth a discussion. Do you think older warbands should ‘rotate’ for competitive play? Do you think it should have a date cutoff, or do we only ban or restrict certain ‘overpowered’ warbands? Do you think the system is fine as is? (Do you think Games Workshop should continue to sell their warbands and cards, at least online?) I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue with the goal in mind to make tournament play as accessible and fair as possible for all players while allowing for personal creative expression and fun. Looking into my crystal ball and seeing a future where the couple hundred of us continue to smash Ephilim into Gnarlspirit while never seeing a new player might be a pessimistic take, but I want to preserve the growth we have seen in the past few months.

Happy to be wrong, and hopeful for the future no matter how it shakes out. Let me know what you think at SpentGlory@gmail.com